Sunil Mittal, founder and Chairman of Bharti Airtel, is meeting top tech honchos, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg during an ongoing visit to the Silicon valley.

Mittal is accompanied by Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal and other key executives.

While Airtel declined to comment on the agenda, industry sources said that Mittal could be discussing partnerships with key technology players in a bid to ensure that Airtel stays ahead of arch rival Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio.

“The technology is changing rapidly, the role of telecom operators are changing and companies like Google and Apple are the forefront of forcing these changes. Airtel will need strong partnerships with these players to ensure that they stay ahead of the curve,” said an industry analyst who advices Airtel.

Mittal has met with these tech honchos several times during the last few years. Recently, he had met Zuckerberg in India when the latter was garnering support for Facebook’s free basic services.

The two have met at least three times over the last two years. While the details of the latest meeting were not revealed, sources close to the development said that Zuckerberg is keen to partner Airtel for Digital India projects. Airtel and Facebook have an ongoing partnership to offer free access to Web sites in Zambia.

Mittal had also met the Facebook founder over dinner in Barcelona in 2014. Similarly, Cook and Pichai had also met Mittal during their India visits.

Disruption worry

The meetings come at a time when telecom companies in general are worried about the disruption being caused by social networking sites and internet services companies.

While the initial response was to oppose the services being offered by internet companies, telecom companies are now evolving towards a partnership model.

In India for example, services offered by Facebook and Google are driving data consumption in a big way.

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