Sunil Mittal shares succession plan for Airtel

The next generation of Sunil Bharti Mittal’s family will get more shares in Bharti Telecom, the promoter firm of Bharti Airtel, as part of the succession plan unveiled by the telecom czar in a recent call with investors.

Mittal, during an investor call held on February 26, said that his children are running their own businesses independently and getting trained outside Bharti Airtel, where they are seeing their own failures, successes, pain points and managing conflicts.

“I believe I still have some years left to give back to Airtel and Bharti Enterprises but the next generation of my family are all building muscle in different forms and shapes. I think in a few years’ time you will start to see them at the shareholders' table more visible,” Mittal said.

Mittal has three children – Shravin Mittal, Kavin Mittal and Eiesha Pasricha.

“Shravin has already been working for Airtel Africa. He was in the operations when we acquired the company in 2010 till 2012 and he’s been on the board of Airtel Africa since 2018. You will start to see some of the next generation members of the Bharti family in the shareholder forums in the coming years,” Mittal said.

He said that Bharti Telecom is the promoter of Airtel and currently owns about 41 per cent stake in the telecom firm.

“It will be my wish and desire one day to see Bharti Telecom come back to 50 per cent plus shareholding of Airtel. That can, to my mind, happen only with very large dividends and or buyback by Airtel in the future. It is a wish, but even if we have 41 per cent, you would agree with me that as a Nifty 10 company, a 40 per cent plus stake is a very comfortable stake for any promoter to have,” Mittal said.

He said that the company will start doling out more dividends and sought investors' backing to the company for long run and superior returns.

Mittal said some of the friendly investors were not happy when Airtel decided to start operations in Africa in 2010 and now Airtel Africa is a star performer and helped Indian operations during the difficult period of 2016-19 for the telecom sector.

“Airtel Africa in the next few years is poised to be a $10 billion revenue company generating upwards of $5 billion and a very strong subsidiary of Airtel India generating very handsome returns for the company,” Mittal said. Talking about Airtel in India, Mittal said that 8-9 years ago he had advocated for ARPU (average revenue per user) — an important matrix for telecom operators' growth, should be Rs 300.

“I am not counting all the inflation that has taken place in the last eight or nine years. Rs 300 is now 15 per cent away from where Airtel is today. When will it happen? I don’t know but it will certainly get there. Is it a matter of months or is it a matter of a year or two.”

He said that free unlimited data on 5G may need to be bundled into a more coherent way than the current plans.

“I see no reason why heavy consumers, business users and high-end users should be paying only Rs 400 a month, which as you know, is now nearly about four dollars a month. A dollar or two more to provide them these high-quality, high-bandwidth services is the legitimate expectation we have. I remain very hopeful that we will get to 300 but adjusting for inflation. All I think is that we have a new slogan to say an ARPU of Rs 350 would be the most appropriate ARPU in today’s time frame,” Mittal said. In the third quarter ended December 31, 2025, Bharti Airtel recorded a 5.7 per cent increase in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of Rs 259 during the quarter, as compared to Rs 245 a year ago.

Analysts expect telecom operators in India may increase mobile tariffs by 15 per cent after about two years by June this year.