New Delhi, Dec. 6 -- Sunil Mittal at Hindustan Times Leadership Summit LIVE: Bharti Airtel founder and Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal on Saturday spoke with former G20 Sherpa and former CEO of NITI Aayog Amitabh Kant at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2025.

Sunil Mittal started his first business in April 1976 when he was 18 with Rs.20,000 loan from his father. Currently, his net worth stands at $34.2 billion (about Rs.3 lakh crore).

Talking about Airtel's Africa business, Sunil Mittal said, "The first 10 years were very hard.It was like a shock. We went in with the same playbook - low cost, massive expansion, but it took 6-7 years to crack the market."

"We were not importing telephones, we were manufacturing telephones. In the lat...