Bharti Airtel Case In the year 2004, Bharti Airtel was at an important crossroads where the company needed to make decisions that would be instrumental in deciding how successful the company would be in the future. The company was growing at an incredible pace, 100% per year, and it was having trouble keeping up with the growth in order to maintain the network. The process of budgeting, maintaining vendor contracts, and managing IT capital expenditure were starting to become a formidable challenge for the company. Bhart Airtel needed to understand exactly what its core competencies were and make the appropriate strategic plans to focus on the competencies. Bharti Airtel’s core competency was understanding the customer’s needs and building the brand up. There was a 300-400 million potential Indian phone customers, and Bharti Airtel’s goal was to capture as much of the market share as they could. The problem was that the company was spending much of it’s time and resources on maintaining the expansive network and focusing on it’s Information Technology needs. This led to the company being more focused on it’s IT needs and less on it’s core competency. Akhil Gupta decided to make a revolutionary decision by changing they way things had been done. Instead of focusing the company’s time and resources on expanding and maintain the expansive network, Gupta thought it was a better idea to outsource all of it’s IT needs. This unpopular decision by Gupta meant that Bharti Airtel would now have the opportunity to focus all of its energy on expanding it’s market share and growing it’s customer base. The cellphone provider no longer has to worry about the expensive costs and investments related to maintain an extensive network. They wouldn’t have to worry about new equipment or major expenses that held up important resources of the company. The focus was back on its core competency, understanding the customer’s needs and building the brand up.