Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Tuesday advocated for an industry-wide tariff hike saying that the return on capital employed (ROCE) in India’s telecom sector remain low, and said the tariff hike announced by the company in July did not have any negative impact.
Effective July, the company raised monthly tariff plans to a minimum of ₹199 as compared to ₹179 earlier, and a maximum of ₹3,599 from ₹2,999 earlier.
On an earnings call with analysts post its second quarter (Q2) results, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel, Gopal Vittal, said he expects the full impact of the tariff hike to flow through in the ongoing quarter. He added that there is still significant headroom for further hikes in the near future, as the average revenue per user (ARPU) levels in India were still much lower than in smaller countries in the region.
“With the tariff repair that happened in the last few months, we did not actually see any downtrading. We hold down to the user base and kind of moved them into the right plan...we also have a lot of intelligence to identify users who would need the 2GB plan, the combination of devices they have, their usage, characteristics, as well as their potentiality to pay,” he said.
Vittal, who was appointed to a new post of Vice-Chairman effective January 2026, clarified that he has no intention to take up any position outside Bharti Airtel and would just take some responsibilities from Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal.
“I want to clarify that I am fully committed to the Bharti group and I have no intention of taking on anything outside the group,” he said, adding that he will also continue to be the vice-chair of GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications Association), for an additional two years as a nominee of Airtel, which will enable him to bring the latest global technological developments back to Airtel. GSMA represents over 700 telecom carriers across geographies.
Airtel on Monday reported a consolidated net profit (after exceptional items) of ₹3,593 crore, a jump of 168 per cent year-on-year (YoY) for the second quarter ended September 30, as compared with ₹1,340.7 crore in the corresponding quarter last financial year.
Consolidated revenue for the quarter (Q2 FY25) in review also grew by 12 per cent YoY to Rs.41,473 crore as against Rs.37,044 crore in the July-September period last financial year.