Sunil Mittal

Sunil Bharti Mittal was born on October 23, 1957, in Ludhiana, Punjab. Starting his entrepreneurial career in 1976 with a modest borrowed capital of ₹20,000 making bicycle crankshafts, Mittal demonstrated extraordinary foresight in the early 1990s when India began liberalizing its telecommunications sector. Securing one of the earliest cellular licenses for Delhi, he launched services under the brand name 'Airtel' in 1995.

Mittal pioneered the revolutionary 'factory model' of telecommunications—outsourcing network management to Ericsson and IT infrastructure to IBM—slashing operational overhead and enabling ultra-affordable mobile tariffs that fueled India's mobile internet explosion. In 2010, Mittal orchestrated the bold $10.7 billion acquisition of Zain Africa, expanding Airtel's footprint across 15 African nations and becoming one of the most successful emerging-market infrastructure builders in history.

Honored with India's third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, and serving as Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Mittal’s philanthropic Bharti Foundation educates hundreds of thousands of underprivileged rural children through the Satya Bharti School program.