Asim Ghosh has retired from Vodafone Essar after being at the helm for 10 years, two years after Vodafone acquired Hutchison shares. He will continue as a non-executive member on the board of the company and his plans for the future include reading, golf, photography and travel. This is the man who started off with a single license in Mumbai city as managing director of Hutchison Max Touch to making Vodafone Essar into the third largest mobile operator in the country. Characteristically media-shy, 61-year-old Ghosh has for the first time talked openly about FDI, 3G and India's potential for mobile growth but his comments to CNBC-TV18 and Business Standard on Bharti Airtel's Sunil Mittal are what caught our attention: Sold Equity At The Right Time Ghosh said that Mittal did a "brilliant job of seizing the moment and pulling victory from the jaws of defeat" when technology (CDMA versus GSM) was still being debated in the sector. In 2000, telecom was still considered infrastructure and policy changes were often, making analysts and investors suspicious of long term investments. But Bharti still bagged a major promoter like Singtel in 2001, who bought a 28 percent stake in the telco for $400 million. Singtel subsequently upped it to 31 percent in 2005. Around the same time, Bharti also went in for an IPO to fund its ambitious expansion plans. These two moves were, as Ghosh put it, "in the nick of time" as the economy went south and the telecom industry plunged…
