In November 2024, Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Global acquired a 24.5% stake in BT Group for approximately £3.6 billion, making an Indian entrepreneur the single largest shareholder of Britain’s largest broadband and telecommunications company. For anyone with an appreciation of economic history, this was significant. Between 1997 and 2001, BT held a 21% stake in Bharti Airtel, one of India’s pioneers in modern telecoms. The investee has become the investor, and more significantly, it illustrates that the direction of capital flows is no longer one-way.
The Bharti-BT deal represents what Indian private capital is capable of—building an innovative and competitive business in a challenging sector, generating profits through performance rather than regulatory arbitrage. The larger question is whether the recent phenomenon of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) signals a structural shift or whether it is capital seeking more hospitable conditions elsewhere, or simply some combination of the two.
