It's India Calling for Sarin

It was Arun Sarin's first and only press conference in India on October 28, 2005. Vodafone had just bought a 10 per cent stake in Bharti.

He was introduced on stage by Sunil Mittal and asked to address the media. Sarin got up and said: "Hello, everyone. I'm Arun Sarin. I'm here. Vodafone is here."

Every biography of Sarin has the word "brash" popping up somewhere.

For the telecom industry in India, Sarin and Vodafone's entry into the market could mean that the rules of the game in India might have to change.

For Indian chests might swell with pride at the glass ceilings Sarin as an immigrant has smashed to become what he is: one of the most powerful businessmen in the world in control of a British icon. But he said once: "Where we can buy control, we like to buy control." Indians might wish this was done a bit more subtly.

Subtle, Sarin may not be. Ambitious, he is. At 35, he was the youngest corporate officer at Pacific Telesis, a telecom company he joined after an engineering degree from IIT, Kharagpur; a Masters from University of California at Berkeley, followed by an MBA, the latter at the advice of fellow student Rummi, whom he later married.

At Pacific Telesis, Sarin's talent at managing money and overseeing mergers and acquisitions were noted and nurtured by telecom entrepreneur Sam Ginn whom he followed to AirTouch Communications.

At AirTouch, Sarin skipped his own 40th birthday party when he got word that rivals were planning a conglomeration deal that could be hostile to his company. He defused that in ways that only a Hollywood movie can capture.

When AirTouch did a deal with Vodafone, it didn't just create wireless synergies in both America and Europe, it provided Sarin an opportunity to put his talents to use in mergers and acquisitions. He tied up a deal between Airtouch-Vodafone and

InfoSpace, an internet infrastructure company to deliver wireless Internet services to mobile customers in several countries. This expanded the horizons of telecom in a way not known before.

Vodafone was then headed by Sir Christopher Gent, who represented the British establishment and denied he was a "ruthless shark". Sarin wanted to become COO of Vodafone, Gent didn't think it needed one.

They parted amicably and Gent offered Sarin a non-salaried position as a member of the board of directors, an offer he accepted. Sarin joined InfoSpace as CEO, left, joined Accel-Kkr Telecom, left. In 2002, Chris Gent announced he was retiring from Vodafone. Sarin returned to the place he always wanted to be : Vodafone as CEO. Aggressive mergers and acquisitions were part of his policy. He was direct, willing to pay a price and nearly always got what he wanted - Singlepoint, a mobileservice provider at $652 million.

However, shareholders and investors baulked at the price Vodafone was having to pay. Sarin tried to acquire AT&T Wireless Services, but lost a bidding war with Cingular.

"I've met a lot of CEOs. But I count him as one of the best. He has high energy levels, is a straight talker and is rated very high in European telecom circles," said an Indian telecom veteran who knows him well. "He has problems with shareholder activism. But that's a common problem."

In the last week of December, Ravi Ruia met Sarin in London. "They (Vodafone) are in 25 countries. They have to be in India," said a source in the industry about the meeting.

With the mobile phone business reaching saturation levels in the West and East Asia, and China remaining a closed market, India is the only place where there is some prospect for growth. But keeping to the price line here has problems of its own.

So will there be more consolidation in the telecom industry in India, not if, but when Vodafone comes here ? The world will be watching Vodafone and Arun Sarin to see if he has finally arrived "" in the land of his birth.