Analysts feel that he may be getting MTN on the cheap, which means he has negotiated well; certainly, he is paying less than what he would have paid a year ago.

Mittal is not just good at deal-making, he is also innovative -- having pioneered the concept of separating the telecom service business from the hardware side and from the back-end work (the latter having been outsourced to IBM).

This has been at the heart of Bharti's low-cost telecom model, which others now strive to copy.

Mittal is also smart enough to know when to fight, and when to compromise. He and the other GSM mobile companies fought a fierce battle to prevent what they saw as backdoor entry into the mobile phone business by Reliance.

Powered by