Bharti Teletech may be listed in the near future

Bharti Group today said it may consider an initial public offering (IPO) for its telecom equipment company, but ruled out going public for the retail, agriculture and finance businesses for atleast five years.

"We will not go public for any of the businesses till they mature. The only company which may be a candidate for an IPO in the near future is Bharti Teletech," Sunil Mittal, chairman and group managing director, told PTI in an interview.

Bharti has announced close to $12 billion (nearly Rs 52,000 crore) investment in the next 5-7 years with $8 billion (about Rs 36,000 crore) in telecom by 2010 and over $2 billion (over Rs 9,000 crore) in retail and up to Rs 1,500 crore in the financial services among others.

Asked about the source of funds and reason for not going public, Mittal said, "we are virtually debt-free company and therefore bringing investments is not a problem at all.

"As far as going public is concerned, I feel its my job to put risk capital first and once the risk is dimnished or in some cases it is eliminated then we can go to capital market," he added.

Bharti Teletech has been manufacturing basic phones under the brand name Beetel, has production facilities in Ludhiana and Goa each, with a total capacity of about 6.5 million phones annually.

The company last year achieved a milestone of producing 30 millionth phone and is targetting to double the export to 1.5 million units this year.(PTI)