Rakesh Bharti Mittal is the President of Nehru Siddhant Kender Trust and is also the Vice-Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, one of India’s leading business groups with interests in telecom, agri-food business, financial services, realty, and communication & media devices. Bharti Airtel, the flagship company of Bharti Enterprises is a global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its mobile network covers a population of over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated telecom provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. Bharti Infratel, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, is a leading provider of passive telecom infrastructure in India. Bharti has joint ventures with several global leaders: Singtel, AXA, Del Monte, SoftBank, and Brightstar.
Rakesh is the Chairman - Bharti AXA Life Insurance, Bharti AXA General Insurance and Field Fresh Foods. He is also a Non-Executive Director - Bharti Airtel and Managing Director - Bharti Realty Limited.
Rakesh served as the President of CII for the year 2018-19. He has been the Chair of several CII Councils and Committees at the National level.
Rakesh is the Co-Chair of the India-Uzbekistan Business Council. He is also a member of India-UK CEO Forum, India-Japan Business Leaders’ Forum, India Pakistan Joint Business Forum (IPJBF), Founders Circle - Brookings India and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). Rakesh is a member of the Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), Member of the Governing Board of Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Member of the Advisory Board of Pranab Mukherjee Foundation. Rakesh also serves as a member of the Economic Advisory Council – Government of Haryana. In the past, he served as a member of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), Society of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the National Food Processing Development Council (NFPDC), MOFPI, Government of India. Rakesh also served as the Honorary Consul for Republic of Sierra Leone in India from 2014 to 2020.
A passionate advocate of right to good education, Rakesh serves on Boards of several educational institutions. He is a member of All India Board of Studies for Post-Graduate Education and Research in Engineering & Technology (AIB-PGERT), Board of Indian School of Business (ISB) and Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at ISB Mohali. Rakesh is the Co-Chairman of the Advisory Board of Bharti School of Telecommunication Technology & Management at IIT Delhi. He is a Member of the Court at Bennett University. He serves as member of the Managing Society and Governing Board of Dayanand Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana. He is also the President of Nehru Sidhant Kender Trust and also the Chairman of the Governing Council of Sat Paul Mittal School.
In the past, he has served on the Advisory Council of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Delhi, a member of the Board of Governors of Thapar University, the Punjab Education Development Board and Member of the Executive Council at Uttarakhand Open University. Rakesh served as a member of the ‘Round Table on School Education’ for Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India. He also served as a member of the International Advisory Council of Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, USA and the Executive Council of YMCA University of Science and Technology. Rakesh was also a member of India – Canada CEOs Forum and Punjab Investment Advisory Council (PIAC).
Rakesh believes that a responsible corporate has a duty to give back to the community in which it operates. This belief has resulted in Bharti Foundation, which operates nearly 200 Satya Bharti Schools as well as supports over 800 government schools under Quality Support Program to ensure holistic education for over 275,000 under-privileged children in villages across 16 States. With a focus on the girl child, the Satya Bharti Schools provide free education, mid-day meals, books and uniforms to all the children. Supporting the Prime Minister’s mission of Swachh Bharat, Bharti Foundation launched Satya Bharti Abhiyan and has provided over 25,000 individual household toilets in Ludhiana and rural Amritsar, impacting lives of over 1,86,000 beneficiaries and enabled these areas to become open defecation free.
Rakesh has been awarded the Honorary Doctor of Civil Law Degree by Newcastle University, UK. He is a recipient of several awards including the prestigious ’Horasis – Indian Business Leader of the Year 2016 Award (Internationalization), ‘Institute of Engineers - Engineering Excellence Award 2004’, and ‘LMA - Entrepreneur of the year Award 1992’. In 2019, the Satish Chander Dhawan (S.C.D) College, Ludhiana bestowed Rakesh with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for his invaluable contributions in business, different areas of public interest, and nation as a whole.