A young Sunil Mittal had every reason to be delighted as he posed obligingly for photographers next to then-BT chairman Sir Iain Vallance.
The Indian tycoon had just signed a deal in which the British telecoms giant would take a 21pc stake in his upstart business, Bharti Cellular, and gain exposure to the Indian market. At that point in 1997, the Anglophile Mittal and his siblings seemed content to be junior partners.
But today it is the 66-year-old – now one of the world’s richest men, and an investor in UK assets including the luxury Gleneagles Hotel – who is returning as the benevolent shareholder, ready to dispense pearls of wisdom to a much smaller BT.
His business empire, Bharti Global, revealed on Monday that it was acquiring a 24.5pc stake in the British company from embattled French tycoon Patrick Drahi – making Mittal its new top shareholder at the stroke of a pen.
The deal marked a “significant milestone” for Bharti, a statement from Mr Mittal said, while underscoring the billionaire’s confidence “in BT and in the UK”.
Insiders say it is also viewed as a significant coup within BT’s London headquarters after Allison Kirkby, BT’s chief executive, personally led a months-long charm offensive to secure Mr Mittal’s support.
“We welcome investors who recognise the long-term value of our business, and this scale of investment from Bharti Global is a great vote of confidence in the future of BT Group and our strategy,” she said.
In replacing Mr Drahi on the share register, BT will be hoping it has swapped an aggressive activist with a friendlier ally who is happy to support the existing strategy.
That is because Mittal, a self-made entrepreneur, already knows the business and some of its executives well, including Harmeen Mehta, BT’s head of digital, who previously worked at his own company.
‘Play for the long term’
Like Drahi, Mittal also made his name in telecoms, which still forms the core of the massive Indian conglomerate he and his brothers built from a bicycle parts supplier they started in the 1970s.
But while Drahi built an empire on debt-fuelled deals and aggressive cost-cutting, Mr Mittal – though seen as a wily operator – has a reputation for backing his executives to “play for the long term”.
“When it comes to risk taking, I have my neck to offer,” he told India’s Business Standard two years ago.
“When the CEO of my company needs to take a risky decision, I will understand and put my neck in front of the shareholders, stakeholders, board etc. This combination is very powerful.”
At home, he is one of the few telecom tycoons left standing after the dawn of services in the 1990s, having navigated a series of battles with the Ambanis, India’s most prominent business family.
In the mid-2000s, Airtel successfully fought off a challenge to its market leadership from the much bigger Reliance Communications, owned by Anil Ambani.
According to Indian press reports, Mittal told his staff to knuckle down and focus on service quality and wait for their rival to make a mistake – a strategy that duly paid off.
More recently, in the mid-2010s, his company and other telecom operators including Vodafone faced an existential challenge from Jio, a new network owned by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and brother to Anil, which gained hundreds of millions of customers by offering rock-bottom prices and free data deals.
This time, Mr Mittal – now the incumbent – appealed directly to Narendra Modi, India’s new business-friendly prime minister who also shared close ties with Ambani, for reassurances about government decisions that appeared to favour his rival.
Sunil Mitall emerged as a key ally of Narendra Modi, often praising India's prime minister in public - Sajjad Hussain/AFP
“I told him that things were going very badly and the situation was getting very alarming,” Mr Mittal recalled later in an interview with India’s Economic Times.
“I said ‘I will fight in the marketplace, but I can’t fight the government.’
“[Modi] told me: ‘This government will not tilt towards either side. Whatever is good for the country will be done. You fight in the marketplace. I don’t have a view on that. But from the side of the government, you can be sure that the government will not take sides.’
“And that was enough for me. I got up and thanked him... This was the turning point.”
Since then he has emerged as a key Modi ally, often praising the prime minister in public.
He has also extended his business interests into another fast-growing frontier for telecoms – space – with investments in low-orbit satellite operator OneWeb, a potential challenger to Elon Musk’s Starlink service.
Through OneWeb, Mittal’s links with the British government – which joined him to bail the UK company out in 2020 – have also been thrust into the spotlight. OneWeb was later merged into Eutelsat but the Indian tycoon remains a major shareholder.
At the moment, Mittal’s ambitions for BT remain shrouded in mystery – but it is possible he could seek to steer the British company towards a partnership of some kind with OneWeb.
He has also arrived at a pivotal moment at BT, as the former state monopoly – which retains roughly three quarters of the UK’s telecoms infrastructure through subsidiary Openreach – finally starts to reap rewards from a years-long, multi-billion pound investment in nationwide fibre broadband services.
British business interests
Meanwhile, Mittal’s links with the British establishment are only growing. He and his family reportedly spend most of their time in the UK already and he became the first Indian citizen to secure an honorary knighthood during the reign of King Charles III this year, for services to UK and India business relations.
His British business interests include the luxurious Gleneagles hotel and resort in Scotland as well as the more middle-market Hoxton hotel chain, which is run by son-in-law Sharan Pasricha.
The knighthood may have been a nod to the tycoon’s consistent and vocal calls for closer UK-India trade ties, amid an ongoing but stalled process to strike a bilateral free-trade deal.
Sunil Mitall is the first Indian citizen with an honorary knighthood under King Charles III - NurPhoto/Getty Images Contributor
In March, he warned Conservative ministers that the moment of glory was at risk of slipping away.
“There have been many times it appeared to me that it is a done deal,” he told The Telegraph.
“My view is it can be done quickly. The question is, will the British Government be able to do it before [India’s] elections.
“I must say Labour have also been very proactive. We have had a number of visits from the UK shadow ministers.
“The message from Labour was the same: UK and India must deepen their ties.”
On Monday, Mr Mittal banged the drum for closer relations again, as he suggested the BT deal aimed to “support the commitment of our honourable prime minister [Modi] towards his vision in elevating and broadening the India-UK ties”.
It was yet another reminder of the billionaire’s journey from a young hopeful, in a photograph three decades ago, to geopolitical power broker.
As his ties with Britain deepen, there may be even more to come.
