Bharti Airtel MD and CEO Gopal Vittal on Tuesday said in his role as executive vice chairman of the company his work will be to oversee growth of new businesses and drive synergies on digital procurement, talent, and network strategy.
Vittal, who has assumed the role as vice chairman of the company, in addition to being the managing director, will mentor CEO and MD designate Shashwat Sharma. Sharma will take charge from January 2026, with Vittal retaining the slot of executive vice chairman.
“I will take on some of the roles that Sunil (Sunil Bharti Mittal) plays today across the group. My overall remit will be to provide oversight across our operations…We believe this will add capacity to the group,” Vittal said during a call with analysts to discuss July-September quarter earnings.
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Vittal clarified that he will continue to work with the Bharti Group and is not exploring any other opportunities outside.
Among other responsibilities, Vittal will also look at growing the Africa business and bring it par with India business on the level of technology and other parameters.
“Third area is in terms of incubation and growth of some of the new initiatives that we have started. For example, we have a Payments Bank business and financial services lending business, which can be scaled,” Vittal said, adding the company is making investments in cloud business and will soon take its own cloud propositions to market to solve challenges of public cloud.
Analysts also said that the planned restructuring and leadership change at Bharti Airtel is not going to be disruptive. “Since Vittal will be involved over the next 12+ months in ensuring a gradual and smooth transition, we do not expect this change to be very disruptive. This should be further supported by Bharti’s strong established credentials and our view that the peak of competitive intensity is behind us,” Citi Research said in its note on Tuesday.
On Monday, Airtel reported a net profit at Rs 3,593 crore, which was down 13.6% quarter-on-quarter, and much below Bloomberg’s consensus estimate of Rs 4,398 crore. Consolidated revenues rose 7.7% sequentially to Rs 41,473 crore. The company’s revenue growth was led by tariff hikes.
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