As revenue from traditional telecom businesses come under pressure, Bharti Airtel has made plans to aggressively roll out socially relevant services including mobile education, healthcare and mobile money this year. The company will make multi-million dollar investments to develop applications and the ecosystem required to support such services especially in the rural areas.
“Social inclusion is no more a concept of charity or mere lip service, we are making it part of our business plans,” Sanjay Kapoor, CEO, Bharti Airtel, told Business Line, while launching the company’s first sustainability report for its India operations.
Organisationally, Airtel has put in places a sustainability governance structure to ensure that the blue print is acted upon. At the Board level, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Enterprises, will oversee the initiatives. He is supported by the Sustainability Executive Committee, which is chaired by Kapoor. This committee is supported by a cross-functional Sustainability Working Group, whose role is to put the sustainability framework in motion, by driving implementation of strategy and policy across Airtel. This group comprises nominees from across all functions and is led by a dedicated Sustainability Officer.
“Today, India has a low patient-to-doctor ratio of 1:10,000; there are 100,000 schools with only 1 teacher, and 50 per cent of the population does not have a bank account, while 30,000 bank branches can never service 6,00,000 villages. We see an opportunity here,” said Kapoor.
Airtel is exploring options to enhance delivery of telemedicine through the Internet. The company has formed a strategic alliance with Healthfore (a division of Religare Technologies Ltd ). Other projects in education and money payments are in the offing.
Plans cut in carbon emission
The sustainability report discloses that Airtel has achieved a 11 per cent reduction in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per terabyte in network infrastructure in 2011-12. The company has also been able to save around 20 million KWh of energy through the facilities consolidation and data centre energy efficiency initiatives undertaken so far.
The operator has shifted around 2000 tower sites to solar energy. It is also exploring the possibility of using renewable energy solutions such as solar, wind and biomass-based energy in areas with technical feasibility.
The company plans to convert over 5000 additional sites to solar power, 100 sites to Biomass and 50 sites to hybrid battery solutions.
thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in