Bharti Airtel: Rise of a Large

April 9, 2026

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Indian telco Bharti Airtel is not merely a significant participant in worldwide telecom—it is now the world’s second largest worldwide telco group when it comes to cell subscriptions, behind undisputed prime canine China Cell.

Launching its first home cell companies in India in 1995, Bharti Airtel has constructed up a portfolio of companies masking 17 international locations in Asia and Africa. This is a take a look at how Bharti Airtel grew to a world telecom behemoth, powered by knowledge you could find in TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.

A present snapshot of Bharti Airtel

On the finish of 2025, the Airtel group had 601.1 million cell subscriptions throughout its 15 consolidated operations, plus an additional 76.7 million through joint ventures in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, to provide it a complete of 677.8 million cell subscriptions group-wide (word that figures reported by Airtel and people utilized in GlobalComms Database don’t all the time match as a result of various accounting strategies utilized by the guardian group, its native subsidiaries and nationwide regulators).

Bharti Airtel recorded consolidated complete income of INR1.75 trillion ($20 billion) within the yr to end-March 2025, a rise from INR1.50 trillion a yr earlier. EBITDA improved from INR790.5 billion to INR984.2 billion over the identical interval, while internet earnings reached INR335.3 billion, in comparison with INR74.5 billion within the yr to March 31, 2024.

Bharti Airtel’s two most important shareholders are Singtel of Singapore, with a stake of round 27.5% at end-2025, and Bharti Enterprises, with a direct and oblique holding of roughly 21.4%.

Bharti Enterprises was based in 1976 by its present chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal. It is a significant Indian conglomerate, with enterprise pursuits spanning industries together with telecoms, know-how, insurance coverage, actual property and hospitality.

Home enterprise

Bharti Enterprises established a presence in India’s telecoms markets within the mid-Nineteen Nineties via a collection of subsidiaries and joint ventures – together with tie-ups with BT, Telecom Italia and SFR – beginning with Bharti Mobile, which was awarded a GSM license in 1992 and launched in Delhi three years later.

Over the next decade it solidified its place by buying further licenses and thru a number of acquisitions, within the course of firming up its ‘Airtel’ model identification.

In March 2006, nationwide GSM operator Bharti Mobile and regional licensees Bharti Cell, Bharti Mobitel, Bharti Mobinet, Bharti Telenet and Hexacom had been merged into Bharti Airtel.

Airtel now offers retail cell voice and knowledge, fastened broadband and voice, and pay-TV companies all through India, in addition to a variety of company and business-oriented connectivity and ICT options.

Airtel India had 396.4 million cell, 13.1 million fastened broadband and 10.1 million fastened voice subscriptions on the finish of 2025. It sits in second place in all these markets, behind its most important home competitor, Reliance Jio.

Asian joint ventures

The group went on to broaden to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh within the 2000s, and each these companies at the moment are operated in partnership with Axiata of Malaysia.

Airtel acquired a 70% stake in Warid Telecom in Bangladesh in 2010 for $300 million, rebranding it as Airtel Bangladesh in December that yr. Airtel took 100% management in 2013. In 2016, the operator was merged into Robi Axiata, and Airtel now has a 28.2% stake within the enlarged enterprise, with Axiata holding the rest.

Its Sri Lankan division, in the meantime, was established in 2007 when the group paid $4 million for a mixed 2G/3G license. Its business launch befell in January 2009. Airtel Lanka merged with one other Axiata subsidiary, Dialog, in June 2024 via a deal that granted Airtel a ten.4% stake within the enlarged firm. Dialog Axiata controls round 66% of Sri Lanka’s cell market.

Airtel Africa

Airtel acquired a swathe of recent models in 2010 when it took over the cell operations of Zain Group in 15 African international locations for a complete of $10.7 billion. The footprint has modified barely since then, with two extra markets added (Seychelles and Rwanda) and exits from three international locations (Burkina Faso, Ghana and Sierra Leone).

Airtel’s Operations

Nation	Operator	Cell subs	Efficient possession
Nation	Operator	(Dec 2025)	(direct and oblique)
India	Bharti Airtel	396,431,970	100.0%
Nigeria	Airtel Nigeria	60,893,280	56.1%
Bangladesh	Robi Axiata	57,400,000	28.2%
Kenya	Airtel Kenya	24,500,000	56.1%
Tanzania	Airtel Tanzania	22,945,425	28.6%
Congo, Dem. Rep.	Airtel DRC	22,000,000	55.3%
Sri Lanka	Dialog Axiata	19,332,000	10.4%
Uganda	Airtel Uganda	19,200,000	50.0%
Zambia	Airtel Zambia	12,650,000	50.5%
Madagascar	Airtel Madagascar	9,034,200	56.1%
Malawi	Airtel Malawi	8,625,000	44.9%
Niger	Airtel Niger	8,500,000	50.5%
Chad	Airtel Chad	7,875,000	56.1%
Rwanda	Airtel Rwanda	4,700,000	56.1%
Congo, Rep.	Airtel Congo	2,035,000	50.5%
Gabon	Airtel Gabon	1,622,336	56.1%
Seychelles	Airtel Seychelles	86,223	56.1%

The African operations are managed by holding firm Airtel Africa, which is 62.4% owned by Bharti Airtel.

The group includes Airtel’s cell divisions in 14 international locations, divided into three groupings:

Nigeria
East Africa: Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda
Francophone Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Niger, Chad and Seychelles.

In December 2025, Airtel Africa signed an settlement with US-based SpaceX to introduce direct-to-cell (D2C) companies offered by the latter’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite tv for pc agency Starlink throughout all 14 of its markets. The D2C service is ready to be made obtainable in 2026, initially restricted to textual content messaging and knowledge for chosen functions.

Airtel Africa served a mixed complete of 204.7 million subscriptions throughout its 14 markets on the finish of 2025, up from 184.3 million at December 31, 2024. The largest single operation is Airtel Nigeria, with 60.9 million subscriptions at end-2025.

In its most up-to-date full-year financials, for the yr to end-March 2025, Airtel Africa recorded a internet revenue attributable to shareholders of $220 million, reversing a internet lack of $165 million the earlier yr. The group has been negatively impacted by extreme forex devaluations in Nigeria, Malawi and Zambia. In reported forex, complete income for FY 2024/25 decreased by 0.5% to $4.96 billion, while in fixed forex the corporate reported a 21.1% uptick. Equally, underlying EBITDA totalled $2.30 billion in 2024/25, representing a 5.1% year-on-year lower in reported forex however progress of 18.1% in fixed forex.

Information on cell markets, fastened broadband, fastened voice markets, and extra

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