Bharti Airtel is looking to expand overseas to tap growth in emerging markets. Sunil Mittal, chairman, Bharti Airtel, said that they are ready to go outside India, and that they have the strength and the resilience for it.

According to reports, India, the world's fastest-growing mobile phone market, accounts for almost all of Bharti's earnings. This is quoted as the rationale behind the company's seeking to expand in emerging markets where cellphone usage is low.

Mittal said that Vodafone in Newbury, England and Singtel, South East Asia's largest telephone company, will support Bharti's expansion plans. He said that Bharti is keen on acquiring stakes in growing mobile phone companies. Mentioning that Pakistan is not yet ready to allow an Indian company to invest there, Mittal said that leaves Bharti with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to invest in. He also said that the company is bidding for a few mobile phone licenses in Africa. According to company sources, presently Bharti controls Telecom Seychelles and Jersey Telenet, which is a mobile phone company located in the British Isles.

The Indian telecom market is said to be on a hyper-growth trail. Gartner has observed that the country's mobile phone users are expected to triple to around 300 million by 2009. As for Bharti, at the end of March, the company had a 21.8 percent share of the country's mobile-phone market, which is up from 21.2 percent last year. However, they hope to achieve the target 25 percent market share by 2010.

For the purpose, the company plans to spend $2 million in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007, which is more than the $1.5 billion that was planned earlier. It also hopes to double the number of base stations to 40,000 by March 2007.