INDIA’s Bharti Airtel group earned a record $13.3 billion in revenue from its 2010 operations following its entry into Africa, according to its latest financial results.
The group’s financial results released recently indicate that Airtel’s 15 markets in Africa contributed a total of $924 million.
The revenue was generated from its telecommunication and television businesses across 19 markets in Africa and South Asia.
In their financial statement, the Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel Limited, Sunil Bharti Mittal described the performance as “strong” despite seeing a decline in the company’s net profit by $134.6 million.
The firm attributed the decline to higher interest costs, foreign exchange losses and the rebranding of its Indian operations from Zain to Airtel and higher spectrum costs in India.
Last year Airtel acquired 15 subsidiaries of the Zain Group in Africa for $10.7 billion after failing to acquire the MTN Group.
According to the company, this was followed by the multi-market rebranding exercise in, which it spent over $70 million to market the Airtel brand in Africa and India.
Nigerian network expansion
Deepak Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer at Airtel Nigeria indicates that his company is planning to expand its network within the next few months in order to cope with increased traffic .
“I can tell you that since we launched our brands, we have increased network capacity by nearly 30% and we hope to double our capacity in the next couple of months.
“So I don’t think we will fall back in increasing our network capacity to cater for possible congestion,” says Srivastava.
By: Staff Writer
