The Hindu : Business : New range of cordless phones from Bharti

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004

Business

Business

New range of cordless phones from Bharti

By Our Special Correspondent

— Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

The Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Teletech, Rakesh Bharti Mittal (left), along with Head, Sales, Atlinks, Nicolas Zentz (centre), and the CEO of Bharti Teletech, Pawan Kapur, with the new models of cordless phones in New Delhi on Tuesday. — Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 28. Bharti Teletech, a fixed line phone manufacturer, announced that it is targeting 27 per cent growth in the sale of phones to take it to five million units in 2004-05. Simultaneously the company is assessing the market for making GSM handsets in the near future.

Speaking to media persons after launching the country's first 2.4 GHz band cordless range that would provide better voice clarity, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Teletech, said the company was only evaluating the market for making GSM handsets.

"The volume does not justify manufacturing GSM handsets at present. One needs a least break-even selling volume of 4-5 million units annually to make viable manufacturing.

At present, two million GSM additions are taking place a month. We are not even on the threshold of a required critical mass for manufacturing," he said.

Observing that the company is eyeing to sell ten million phones over the next four years, he said the company was working towards achieving a turnover of Rs. 200 crores by the end of the current fiscal from Rs. 168 crores at present and it had sold 3.9 million phones last year.

He said there was no need for them to raise funds at this stage as it had announced an investment of $1 million in February last from its internal accruals and a sizable amount of that had already been invested. Such need would arise only once the sales reach ten million units and then they could look for raising funds.

While rolling out the first consignment of GE phones manufactured at its Ludhiana factory meant for exports, he said the capacity of Ludhiana and Goa factories could go up to ten million units a year from the current three and two million units per annum respectively.

Following the launch of the 2.4 GHz range, the company is expecting to attain an over 60 per cent market share of cordless phones.

Nicolas Zenz, Head, Global sales, Atlinks, said the introduction of 2.4 GHz range of cordless phones under GE brand stands testimony to our growing partnership and reinforces our belief in Bharti Teletech as the most preferred manufacturing company in India.

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