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Bharti Airtel bitten by the conglomerization bug – 9 new verticals !

Conglomerization is nothing new to India. Almost all the business houses are obsessed with spinning off separate business units. Sometimes in related fields and sometimes in totally unrelated fields. It is so prevalent that even Infosys couldn’t resist having its own spin-off of OnMobile. Now, it is time for Bharti to have its own little conglomerate. Most of them in the related space of technology and few in spaces like retail.

Bharti Airtel has 3 verticals Mobility, Telemedia and Enterprise. This will be split into 9 different verticals with 9 CEO’s. Too many CEO’s right?

Bharti’s upcoming reorganisation is aimed at providing opportunities to its large-talent pool of mid-level managers and to ensure these executives are not lured by rivals (source)

Seriously? Is that why we re-structure a business? If that is the only logic or even the main logic, Airtel has a serious problem. The problem is more to do with talent retention rather than anything else. I just hope that is not the reason for Bharthi’s restructuring.

Getting back to the re-org, there is a thin line between Media and Entertainment. I really don’t see the need for 2 separate units. I have my reservations about Internet but that can be a separate unit. Mobile commerce is ready to explode and Bharti might just have positioned itself really well to cash in on this.

What are those 9 verticals?

  1. Mobile commerce
  2. Entertainment
  3. Media
  4. Internet
  5. Enterprise services
  6. SME

This is what the new organization might look like. This is just a speculation based on the information available. It would be interesting to see what Bharti would do next. Would it list its mobile commerce unit separately? This is actually an anit-climax of what other conglomerates are thinking of.

Reliance Industries just took RPL under its wings. Many other conglomerates who expanded like hell are also thinking of doing the same thing. Why exactly is Bharti going the other way? What do you think of the new re-org of Bharti Airtel?

Sriram Vadlamani: Sriram Vadlamani is the Editor and co-founder of The Gadget Fan and a columnist at Asian Correspondent. You can follow him on twitter @6sv
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