Indian telecommunications tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal is on the cusp of  achieving his dream of building a presence in Africa with a planned US$10,7bn buy-out of assets from Kuwait-based Zain.

But analysts say Mittal, a self-confessed business “junkie”  always hungering for the next deal, will need all his  entrepreneurial chutzpah to turn around Zain’s loss-making phone  operations.

Mittal, who heads India’s largest mobile company, Bharti Airtel,  will be entering “not just one market but 15”, said Romal  Shetty, telecoms head at global consultancy KPMG’s  India unit.

“You can’t play a single strategy for all of them,” he said. “He  has a lot of work ahead.”

Bharti, hoping to make it third time lucky in Africa after two  failed bids for SA’s MTN, said on Friday it expected to  seal a deal in the coming days by which the firm would buy most of  Zain’s African networks.

Mittal, 52, is looking to expand foreign revenues amid a savage  price war at home.

He has already warned shareholders the purchase will hit  Bharti’s earnings. But the trim and dapper CEO says the company  needs a “growth story” in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world’s  least developed phone markets.

In any event, Mittal — who keeps fit with yoga, turns  vegetarian before any big new venture, and credits his successes to  “divine intervention” — knows about dealing with challenges.

After starting out manufacturing bicycle crankshafts with a  $1 500 loan, he spied a chance making push-button telephone  handsets, a novelty at a time when Indians still used rotary dials.

But his fortunes really turned when the government announced  plans to throw open mobile telephony to the private sector in 1992,  paving the way for a telecoms revolution in a country where only  the elite had telephones.

“I knew it was my moment to seize,” said Mittal, who is one of India’s biggest corporate names and a business ambassador, drumming  up investment for the country on trips abroad.

His New Delhi-based firm won a licence to provide mobile  coverage in the national capital in the mid-1990s. It then  broadened its network around the country, snapping up stakes and  licences.

At first it was tough, Mittal recalled while collecting a  business achievement award recently. “We were a rocking boat then. It was a question of when we would  collapse,” said the tycoon, who ranks eighth on Forbes‘s list of  Indian billionaires, with $8,2bn.

Now Bharti Airtel has more than 125m subscribers in  India.

In building Bharti, Mittal is credited with helping transform  India from a country where people paid bribes for phones and faced  huge bills into a place where even rickshaw drivers have mobiles  and call costs are the world’s lowest.

During Bharti’s ascent, he said he learnt “one can’t afford to  be small in this sector. One either aggressively expanded and  gathered size or was acquired.”

The takeover, the first big foreign venture by Bharti, will  create a corporate entity nobody would call small, with operations  straddling two of the world’s fastest-growing markets: Africa  and South Asia. The combined group will have more than 165m subscribers.

The second of three sons of an Indian politician, Mittal hails  from Ludhiana in the northern wheat-bowl state of Punjab and prides  himself on being a “transformational” thinker as well as hands-on  businessman.

“India is a continent of consumers, with 1,1bn billion people  needing goods and services,” he says.

In 2006, his corporate empire, in which his two brothers also  hold senior jobs, struck a 50:50 joint venture deal with Wal-Mart  to bring the US retail giant to India and create a modern wholesale  distribution system. Last year, the partnership opened its first “big box” outlet in  Amritsar, in northern India.

“We entrepreneurs are like junkies — looking for the next big  fix,” he said recently. — Penny MacRae, Sapa-AFP