Airtel charts next growth phase in financial services, data centres, cloud

Bharti Airtel is directing its next phase of growth toward three new business lines: financial services, data centres and cloud computing, after investing more than ₹3.3 lakh crore (₹3.3 trillion) in digital infrastructure over the past decade, Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in the company’s annual report for 2025-26, released late on Saturday night.

In his address to shareholders, Mittal described the past few years as a period in which Airtel took a calibrated approach to building new growth engines, and said the results so far have strengthened the company’s conviction that financial services, data centres and Airtel Cloud are adjacencies in which it has a clear opportunity to compete. He added that these new investments are intended to build on the foundation of Airtel’s existing digital infrastructure, guided by the same approach of customer focus, disciplined execution and long-term planning that has shaped the company so far.

New growth engines
On financial services, Mittal noted that the Reserve Bank of India approved Airtel Money in February to operate as a non-deposit taking non-banking financial company, which he described as a significant milestone for the company and for the broader goal of expanding financial inclusion in India. He said Airtel Money would be capitalised in stages over time. The company had earlier announced a ₹20,000-crore investment in the business over the coming years, to be funded roughly 70 percent by Airtel and the remainder by parent company Bharti Enterprises.

On data centres, the company’s subsidiary Nxtra Data raised $1 billion (about ₹9,500 crore) in March from existing investor Carlyle along with new investors Alpha Wave Global and Anchorage Capital, in addition to Airtel itself, with Airtel retaining a controlling stake. The funding is intended to support an expansion of capacity toward 1 gigawatt over the next few years, up from roughly 300 megawatts currently, on the back of rising cloud adoption, digitisation and data-localisation requirements in India.

On cloud, Mittal described Airtel Cloud, positioned as a sovereign, telco-grade offering hosted within India, as seeing early traction, with more than 24 customer deals secured so far. He said the business is designed to give Airtel’s customers access to globally competitive cloud infrastructure hosted domestically and delivered cost-effectively.

Policy backdrop
Mittal pointed to several policy measures he said are supportive of this shift, including the National Broadband Mission aimed at expanding digital connectivity, and a proposal in the Union Budget 2026-27 for a tax holiday until 2047 for eligible foreign cloud service providers operating from India-based data centres. He said such measures are expected to help attract sustained capital into digital infrastructure while reinforcing data sovereignty. Separately, the report cited government expectations that investment in India’s data centre sector could cross $200 billion (over ₹18 lakh crore) this year.

Tariffs and the core telecom business
Even as Airtel builds out these newer businesses, Executive Vice Chairman Gopal Vittal reiterated that tariff repair remains important for the long-term financial health of the telecom industry. He said growth in the mobility business during the year came primarily through premiumisation, including upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, postpaid subscriber growth, data monetisation and expanding penetration of international roaming, and that Airtel achieved a record revenue market share while adding more than 11.6 million customers over the year. The report noted that India remains among the world’s largest consumers of mobile data even as tariffs stay relatively low, and it described telecom as one of the most heavily taxed sectors, adding that continued policy and regulatory support would be needed to sustain long-term capital investment.

On the network side, Airtel said its 5G customer base grew to 188 million during the year, with its 5G Plus network now carrying roughly half of all wireless data traffic on the network. Vittal said the company’s network is transitioning toward 5G Standalone Architecture, already operating at scale on fixed wireless access, with the mobile network moving to standalone in a phased manner. The report also noted that Airtel is extending capabilities developed in India to its African operations and to tower subsidiary Indus Towers, and that women make up about 20 percent of the company’s workforce. The company also listed continuing partnerships with global technology firms, including Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Eutelsat OneWeb, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, Nokia, Oracle, Qualcomm, Samsung and SpaceX.

Financial position and a conservative read on the numbers
The scale of Airtel’s disclosed commitments is worth placing in context. The ₹3.3-lakh-crore figure cited for infrastructure spending over the past decade is a cumulative number built up over ten years of network build-out, and it dwarfs the initial capital earmarked for the newer bets: the ₹20,000-crore Airtel Money commitment and Nxtra’s $1-billion (about ₹9,500-crore) fundraise are, by comparison, modest allocations spread over multiple years. On the basis of what has been disclosed so far, financial services, data centres and cloud appear to be early-stage growth initiatives that the company is funding cautiously alongside its core telecom business, rather than a wholesale reallocation of capital away from the network. Their eventual contribution to overall revenue and profit has not been quantified in the report.

The annual report also disclosed a contingent liability of ₹6,066 crore tied to a one-time spectrum charge, with total liability including interest at ₹12,137 crore as of March 2026; Airtel said it intends to oppose the Department of Telecommunications’ appeal filed in the Supreme Court in January on this matter. This remains an unresolved legal exposure whose financial impact will depend on the outcome of that appeal. Separately, the board recommended a dividend of ₹24 per share for 2025-26, an increase of 50 percent over the previous year, which Mittal linked to the company’s stated approach of progressively growing payouts while continuing to invest in both its core business and newer growth engines. Read together, the report points to a company funding diversification from a position of improved cash generation, though the newer businesses remain small relative to the core telecom operation and their long-term returns are not yet established.

CT Bureau