'Tariff repair remains important': Airtel VC says as Sunil Mittal charts next big bets — financial services, data centre

Bharti Airtel is betting big on financial services, data centres and cloud as its next growth drivers after investing more than ₹3.3 lakh crore in digital infrastructure over the past decade, Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in the company's annual report released late night on Saturday.

The company also maintained its push for tariff repair, even as it said portfolio premiumisation has continued to deliver strong growth in its mobility business.

“While tariff repair remains important for the long term health of the industry, we delivered growth through portfolio premiumization that covered feature phone to smartphone upgrades, postpaid growth, data monetization and expanding penetration of International Roaming,” Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman of Bharti Airtel said in the report.

The telecom provider also announced that it has achieved a record revenue market share during the year and added more than 11.6 million customers.

Why Airtel says India needs tariff repair

Despite being one of the world's highest data‑consuming markets, India continues to have among the lowest mobile tariffs. According to Bharti Airtel, a more rational tariff framework is needed to improve the telecom sector's longe-term financial health and enable sustained investments in digital infrastructure.

The company also said continued policy and regulatory support is essential to encourage long-term capital formation and strengthen India's digital backbone.

“Given that the telecom sector is among the most heavily taxed, continued policy and regulatory support remains critical to encourage long‑term capital formation,” the company noted, adding that such support is expected to be pivotal in sustaining India’s progress towards a more connected, inclusive and technologically advanced future.

What steps has government taken to support this transformation?

The telecom provider also said that the regulatory environment remains supportive of the structural transformation of the industry, citing initiatives such as the National Broadband Mission which was launched to fast-track digital connectivity across the country.

India's continued policy emphasis on digital inclusion is also playing a major role in strengthening connectivity across rural and underserved regions and widening participation in the economy, the company said.

Further, in the Union Budget 2026–27, the government proposed a tax holiday until 2047 for eligible foreign cloud service providers using India-based data centres for global operations, underscoring the ambition to position India as a global hub for AI and cloud infrastructure.

Where is Bharti Airtel investing?

Bharti Airtel has announced ₹20,000-crore investment in non-banking financial company Airtel Money while its data centre Nxtra recently raised $1 billion (about ₹9,500 crore) as part of its plan to build 1 gigawatt capacity.

"Over the last few years, we took a calibrated approach to build new growth engines for Airtel. These bold bets yielded strong outcomes and have grown our conviction in three adjacencies where we believe Airtel has a clear right to win -- financial services, data centres and Airtel Cloud," Mittal said in the report.

He said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved Airtel Money to operate as a non-deposit taking Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC).

"Our third growth engine, Airtel Cloud, is seeing encouraging early traction. Our sovereign, telco-grade cloud offering addresses an emerging need in the Indian market. Airtel Cloud allows our customers to get access to world-class cloud offerings hosted and held in India and delivered in a cost-effective manner," the Bharti Airtel Chairman noted.

He said Airtel has secured over 24 deals for cloud offering to customers.

Mittal said policies are in place to support cloud, AI and digital infrastructure that are expected to accelerate investments and strengthen the ecosystem. The government expects to attract investments in the data centre space to cross $200 billion (over ₹18 lakh crore) this year.

"Over the last 10 years, your company has invested significantly with over ₹3.3 trillion in creating one of India's strongest digital infrastructure platforms. The emergence of the 5G economy is defining the next phase of growth, enabling new use cases across industries," Mittal said.

He said 5G is accelerating the shift towards high-speed, low-latency connectivity and unlocking new avenues for innovation through widespread network availability. "Our 5G customer base has grown to 188 million. Airtel's 5G Plus network now carries half of all wireless data traffic on our network," Mittal added.