Airtel bets on financial services, cloud; Rs 3.3 lakh cr invested: Mittal

After investing over Rs 3.3 lakh crore in building digital infrastructure in the past decade, Bharti Airtel is betting big on financial services, data centres, and cloud for the next phase of growth, Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in the company’s annual report.

Bharti Airtel has announced Rs 20,000-crore investment in non-banking financial company Airtel Money, while its data centre Nxtra recently raised USD 1 billion (about Rs 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 released late night on Saturday.

He said Airtel Money was granted the approval from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a non-deposit taking Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC).

“This is a significant milestone for your company, as also, for the broader goal of expanding the reach of financial inclusion in India.

“Airtel Money will be suitably capitalised over the years,” Mittal said.

He said Nxtra is on track to build 1 GW of capacity over the next few years, driven by demand from India’s rapid digitisation, rising cloud adoption and increasing data localisation requirements.

“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,” Mittal said.

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.

“Building on this momentum, the long-term tax holiday laid out by the Government of India for cloud and AI-led data centre investments is a timely initiative, expected to catalyse sustained capital inflows into digital infrastructure, while assuring the people of India of sovereign, secure data flows,” Mittal said.

The government expects to attract investments in the data centre space to cross $200 billion (over Rs 18 lakh crore) this year.

“Over the last 10 years, your company has invested significantly with over Rs 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.