Airtel Raises Sales, Marketing Spend 25% as Q1 Profit Climbs

Bharti Airtel’s sales and marketing spends rose 25% YoY in the first quarter ended June 30, 2026, as the telecom operator reported strong growth in revenue and profitability, reflecting its continued focus on customer acquisition, premiumisation and expansion across consumer businesses.

The company said in its financial results released on August 4 that sales and marketing expenses jumped to ₹3,692.9 crore for the quarter from ₹2,965.9 crore in the year-ago period. On sequential basis, the expenditure also increased from ₹3,459.2 crore in the March quarter.

This higher spend is as Airtel continued to invest in client engagement, distribution and subscriber growth across its mobile, broadband and digital services businesses.

On the financial front, Airtel reported consolidated revenue of ₹58,539.1 crore, up 18% year-on-year from ₹49,462.6 crore in the same quarter last year.

Profit before tax (PBT) jumped 34% to ₹14,126.2 crore and net profit, after exceptional items, rose 37% to ₹8,167.4 crore. EBITDA grew 19% to ₹33,598.6 crore. EBITDA margin improved to 57.4% from 56.9% a year ago.

Also Read: Govt Proposes Changes to UPI Zero-MDR Law

Mobile, broadband drive growth:

Airtel’s India business remained the main growth engine in the quarter.

It added 3.27 million subscribers in the quarter, taking its mobile subscriber base to 376.5 million, up 3.8 percent year on year.

The post-paid subscriber base increased by 12.9% to 30 million and smartphone users hit 303.2 million.

Customer upgrades and higher data usage helped lift average revenue per user, or ARPU, to ₹264 from ₹250 a year earlier and ₹257 in the March quarter.

The Digital TV business subscriber base remained steady at 16 million and ARPU saw a marginal improvement to ₹160. But net additions plunged to 6,000 from 570,000 in the previous quarter.

The Home Services business continued to grow with a 33.9% year-on-year increase in the customer base to 14.69 million. Airtel added 473,000 broadband subscribers during the quarter and Home Services ARPU remained stable at ₹523.

Also Read: Air India Launches Tourism Campaign After Ministry Partnership

Network expansion continues:

Total traffic was up 36% y-o-y at 31,062 million GB, driven by solid data consumption. Average monthly data usage per customer increased to 34.4 GB from 26.9 GB a year ago.

Airtel’s 4G/5G subscribers increased to 301.8 million which is 80.5% of its total mobile customer base. Mobile service revenue increased to ₹28,525.3 crore, up 6.7% YoY.

The telecom operator also maintained investments in network infrastructure during the quarter. population coverage increased to 97.4%, its optical fibre network expanded to 542,570 route kilometres, number of network towers increased to 347,491 and total mobile broadband base stations reached 1.20 million.

Airtel also expanded its Home Services presence to 1,653 cities, while its Digital TV business continued to cover 640 districts.