Chairman and Group CEO of Bharti Airtel Ltd., Sunil Bharti Mittal has been awarded the GSM Association Chairman's Award 2008 at the recently concluded GSMA Meet in Barcelona, Spain. This Award, which is the highest honour in the global telecom sector, has been conferred on Mr. Mittal for his tremendous contribution to the development of India’s telecom sector. It reflects Mr. Mittal’s remarkable dedication, personal passion and leadership toward the goal of connecting people via communication across the broad spectrum of Indian society. In doing so, he has led a business revolution which has seen Bharti Airtel innovate in unique ways and reinvent its business model in order to sustainably serve and connect the lowest income strata of Indian society.

Congratulating Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal on receiving this award, GSM Association Chairman Craig Ehrlich said “Mr. Mittal has built an incredibly successful business from scratch, one which has had a truly transformational impact on our industry, on the customers he serves and on India’s economy. His brave and ambitious strategies will continue to resonate across the country, our industry and the business community globally, becoming a benchmark for emerging markets worldwide. We congratulate Mr. Mittal, on what has been an immense personal contribution to the vitality of the mobile world."

The GSMA Chairman’s Award was first established in 1995 and recognizes people or organisations that have made a real difference to the mobile industry - pushed the industry into a whole new dimension. Some of the previous awardees include Jorma Ollila, former CEO and now chairman of Nokia; Sir Christopher Gent, former CEO of Vodafone, and Zhang Li Gui, former president of China Mobile.