It is recently announced that Bharti SoftBank (BSB), an equal equity mobile Internet joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank, is less than a year old, but it has already launched or struck deals with companies to launch a couple of new products. These include the Hoppr- a location based check-in service, Hike, a peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging app and the proposed mobile portal in the works (along with Yahoo Japan).
“Partner, build, acquire- that is our strategy going forward. Even as the firm has three-pronged strategy, it would be involved more in the incubating and partnering space rather than acquiring,” said Kavin Bharti Mittal, head of strategy & new product development, BSB.
“One misconception that people have is that we have a $100-million fund. That is not true. We plan to invest in our startups early. Each startup has funding for a year and we will re-evaluate at the end of the year to see if the objectives have been achieved. This is the model we would be following in the future,” he further added
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