Gopal Vittal’s high-stakes cloud play for Airtel

Bharti Airtel delivered solid earnings at the end of the first quarter of FY26, with India revenues growing 29% year-on-year to Rs 37,585 crore. Airtel’s average revenue per user, already the highest in the industry, rose to Rs 250 from Rs 245 in the previous quarter. In the earnings call that followed, CEO Gopal Vittal said the Indian telecom industry needs a “tariff repair.”

The attention of the analysts, however, was more on the newly launched Airtel Cloud. Just two days before the earnings call, Vittal had unveiled Airtel’s new subsidiary, Xtelify, that will house all digital assets and sell cloud and software licences to enterprises. Airtel’s tech system runs on in-house cloud and software applications, and now it wants to monetise them, Vittal had mentioned in previous earnings calls. 

The CEO dubbed Airtel’s foray into cloud as a seminal moment, underlining the telecom company’s transition into a tech solutions provider. The overall size of the cloud market is Rs 60,000 crore, Vittal said. “For us to gain any market share, there will be a substantial contribution to B2B business,” Vittal told the analysts.