Bharti Airtel Ltd. plans to invest ₹20,000 crore into its financial services units over the next few years, as India’s second largest telecom operator looks to step up digital lending.
The billionaire Sunil Mittal-led company will contribute 70% of the ₹20,000-crore infusion into Airtel Money, which secured an NBFC licence from Reserve Bank of India on 13 February, according to an exchange filing on Monday (23 February 2026). Bharti Enterprises Ltd. will pool in the rest.
The move “will leverage the large Airtel customer base to build the next growth engine for the company and further diversify its portfolio”.
Airtel’s expansion comes as competition intensifies in India’s non-bank financial services space dominated by Bajaj Finance Ltd. Arch rival Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. recently entered the lending industry with Jio Financial Services Ltd.
The move also comes at a time when Bharti Airtel is looking to diversify beyond telecom into data centres, cloud and enterprise services.
On Monday, Bharti Airtel shares rose 0.98% to ₹1,997.15 apiece on the BSE even as the benchmark Sensex ended the day 0.58% higher at 83,294.66 points.
