Glad tidings

New Delhi, July 24: Bharti Airtel today posted a 34 per cent increase in standalone net profit at Rs 2,025 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2008 against Rs 1,511.60 crore a year ago.

Total revenue, according to US accounting rules, rose 44 per cent to Rs 8,483.30 crore from Rs 5,904.60 crore a year ago.

“On the mobile side, it has been a particularly strong quarter with monthly customer addition crossing the 2.5-million mark,” said Sunil Mittal, chairman and managing director, Bharti Airtel.

“With our network distribution and brand strength, we are confident of continuing to lead this growth story,” he said.

In the first quarter, the company added 6.9 million subscribers, taking the number of subscribers to more than 70 million.

“The quarter saw robust growth as we achieved economies of scale. The engine of growth has been huge subscriber addition,” said Akhil Gupta, chief financial officer and joint managing director of the company.

On MTN, Bharti said it was now up to the South African company to decide whether there was any possibility of resuming talks for an alliance.

“There were always synergies between both the companies to have an alliance. That is why we went up to a certain stage of our discussion with them,” said Gupta.

Bharti had called off talks with the South African company in May, which then tried to forge an alliance with Bharti’s rival, Reliance Communications.

Bharti offers mobile services on the GSM platform in all the 23 service areas of the country, accounting for nearly a quarter of India's total mobile users.