Bharti Airtel Invests ₹20,000 Crore in Financial Services Expansion

Bharti Airtel is transitioning its business model beyond telecommunications to focus on financial services, data centers, and cloud computing. In the company's FY26 annual report, Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal announced a ₹20,000-crore investment in Airtel Money, which received approval from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a non-deposit taking Non-Banking Financial Company.

The company is simultaneously scaling its digital infrastructure. Its data center subsidiary, Nxtra, raised $1 billion to build 1 gigawatt of capacity, while the company has secured over 24 deals for its sovereign cloud offering. These moves follow a decade of digital infrastructure investment totaling over ₹3.3 trillion, leveraging a 5G Plus network that serves 188 million customers.

Financial results show a 39.7% share of industry revenues and a record consolidated operating free cash flow exceeding ₹60,400 crore. Executive Vice Chairman Gopal Vittal noted the need for industry-wide tariff repair and is focusing on simplifying processes and transitioning to standalone 5G architecture to manage rising technology and infrastructure costs.