Mittal charts map for Bharti Telecom to regain Airtel majority

New Delhi: Bharti Telecom should return to having a majority ownership in Bharti Airtel as it had in the past, chairman Sunil Mittal said. He also outlined his objective to increase the Indian telecom operator's stake in its African subsidiary to as much as 90%.

Mittal addressed analysts on Thursday, a day after Airtel announced a share-swap deal that will increase his family's stake in India's second largest telecom company even as he starts preparing to pass on the reins to the next generation.

The ₹28,220 crore share-swap agreement between Bharti Airtel and Indian Continent Investment Ltd (ICIL), the Mauritius-based investment entity of the Bharti family, will help narrow the gap in the family's ownership in the telecom operator with its largest shareholder, Singapore telecom company Singtel.


Both the Mittal family and Singtel hold most of their stakes in Airtel through Bharti Telecom, which has a 40.47% ownership in Bharti Airtel. The Mittals and Singtel also separately own stakes in Bharti Airtel.

Bharti Airtel's holding in UK-listed Airtel Africa will go up to 78% after the closure of the share-swap agreement.

Mittal said Bharti Airtel can increase its stake in the Africa unit to 90%, the maximum a promoter can hold as per UK listing rules, over the next several years through Airtel Africa's own buyback programmes or by the parent purchasing blocks from other investors.

Mittal said his dream is to have more than 800 million customers-500 million in India and 300 million in Africa-across mobile, home broadband, digital and financial services.

The company may explore buying good value telecom assets globally in the medium to long-term horizon, he said, but added that nothing is currently on the table.

Single holding entity

The chairman attended the quarterly analyst call after a long time to explain the company's objectives behind the shareholding restructurings.

He said the objective is to have a single entity holding a controlling stake of Airtel.

Bharti Telecom had held a controlling stake of over 51% before it got investments from foreign promoters. Mittal's plan is to leverage Airtel's large cash reserves to continuously increase dividends and undertake potential buy backs of shares to increase Bharti Telecom's shareholding in the telecom operator.

"In the next decade, as I kind of come to a point where I hand over the reins to the next generation of shareholders, Bharti Telecom should get back to controlling shareholding of 51% or just over 50%," Mittal said. "There's 10% more to go and for a company of this magnitude and size, you can imagine that is not a small task," he added.

Mittal said his vision is to have the direct stakes owned by Mittal family investment entity ICIL and Singtel subsidiary Pastel in Bharti Airtel folded into Bharti Telecom as much as possible.

As of May 2026, Singtel had an effective stake of around 26.8% in Airtel. This has come down from about 33% in 2022, since when the Singapore-based strategic partner has pared its holding in Airtel as part of a capital-recycling strategy for its own investments in 5G and data centres.

The Mittal family's total effective stake will increase to 23.2% after the share-swap deal, from around 21% now. Mittal said the family has a nearly 7-percentage-point gap with Singtel in Airtel's holding. With the share-swap deal to purchase Africa shares, the gap will come down to 3.6 percentage points, as ICIL's stake will increase to 3.5% from 0.95%.

With Singtel on a stated path to reduce its direct stake in the Indian company, to reach an equal shareholding, Mittal said, the Singapore telco will need to sell much less than earlier over the next 3-4 years to achieve equalisation.