Bharti Airtel: The ARPU growth story of the company

# Bharti Airtel: The ARPU growth story Bharti Airtel Limited is increasingly focusing on extracting more revenue from existing customers rather than relying only on subscriber additions. Its mobile ARPU reached ₹264 in Q1 FY27, with premiumisation becoming an important growth lever. **What is changing:** Airtel recently removed several prepaid plans, including the ₹299 option, pushing some users toward higher-priced plans. The ₹349 plan, for example, offers unlimited 5G data. Analysts estimate that the changes could add around ₹4–12 to monthly ARPU depending on customer migration. Airtel is also adding more benefits to premium postpaid plans. Its ₹999 and higher family plans now include Apple's iCloud+, Apple TV and Apple Arcade, giving customers more reasons to move toward higher-value plans. The strategy matters because telecom is a capital-intensive business. Airtel has previously stated that ARPU needs to move toward ₹300 to support the industry's investment requirements and generate reasonable returns on network and spectrum investments. **My view:** The interesting part of Airtel's growth story is that monetisation does not necessarily require an immediate headline tariff hike. Better plan mix, higher data usage, postpaid migration and bundled digital services can gradually increase revenue per customer. However, premiumisation has a limit. If pricing rises faster than customers' willingness to pay, churn or migration to cheaper plans could offset part of the benefit. **What I'm watching:** mobile ARPU, premium-plan migration, subscriber churn, 5G monetisation and postpaid additions. **Stance:** For Airtel, the key metric is increasingly revenue quality per customer rather than subscriber growth alone. **Disclosure:** I am a SEBI Registered Research Analyst. Please refer to the applicable disclosures before taking any investment decision.