Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest telecom service provider, on Thursday reported a 24% year-on-year increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 10,710 crore for the second quarter ended September 2026, compared with Rs 8,651 crore in the same period last year.
The company's consolidated revenue from operations rose 16.7% to Rs 60,877.5 crore during the quarter, from Rs 52,145.4 crore a year ago. Its India revenue grew 9.4% to Rs 42,308 crore.
India Mobile revenue increased 10.1% year-on-year, supported by customer additions and higher realisation. The company's average revenue per user (ARPU), a key measure of revenue earned from each customer, rose to Rs 271 in the September quarter from Rs 256 in the year-ago period.
Airtel said its focus on strengthening its postpaid offerings helped it add a record 1.2 million net postpaid customers during the quarter, taking its total postpaid customer base to 31.2 million. Its smartphone data customer base increased by 18.8 million over the past year, including 2.9 million additions during the quarter.
The company's home broadband business added 676,000 customers during the quarter.
“We delivered another quarter of consistent performance with consolidated revenues of Rs 60,878 crore, increasing 4.0% QoQ, underscoring the strength of our diversified portfolio… India Mobile delivered revenue growth of 3.4% QoQ, backed by our strategy of portfolio premiumization and winning quality customers. Our postpaid momentum remained strong with record high net customers additions of 1.2 million. We added 2.9 million smartphone data customers with continued improvement of our industry leading ARPU at Rs 271,” said Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman of Bharti Airtel.
Airtel is also expanding its data centre business and aims to build 1 GW of capacity. During the quarter, it invested in a strategic land parcel as part of this plan.
The company also strengthened its postpaid offerings by adding Apple's expanded iCloud+ services, including Apple TV and Apple Arcade.
On the network front, Airtel deployed 497 towers and 11,684 mobile broadband base stations during the quarter. Over the past year, it added 5,649 towers and laid 44,718 km of fibre to improve network coverage and capacity.
Separately, Airtel Business and ITI Ltd entered into a strategic partnership to help enterprises modernise legacy systems, improve operational efficiency and strengthen security.