“My own wish is that in the next decade, as I come to a point where I hand over the reins to the next generation, Bharti Telecom should get back to controlling shareholding of 51% or just over 50%,” he said.
Mittal has two sons and a daughter. Shravin Mittal runs London-based investment firm Unbound and is managing director of Bharti Global, the group’s international investment arm, which has backed satellite communications company Eutelsat OneWeb. His other son, Kavin Mittal, founded messaging platform Hike, which later pivoted to gaming before shutting operations last year following India’s clampdown on money gaming platforms. His daughter Eisha Mittal is a London-based lifestyle investor.
Back in February, Mittal publicly spoke about the succession plan for the first time, and said that the younger family members would be mentored by him, Airtel executive vice-chairman Gopal Vittal and the group’s senior leadership team. Mittal also has two brothers — Rakesh Mittal and Rajan Mittal — who remain part of the broader business family.
On capital allocation, Mittal said free cash flow stood at $4 billion in India and $5 billion on a consolidated basis in FY26. The company will follow a progressive dividend payout in steady state and will also continue buybacks.
The company will invest in the core business, deleverage, and expand into adjacencies including data centres, NBFC and cloud, he added. The company currently has 10–12% market share in data centres and said it plans to step up capacity, targeting 1 GW over the next few years.
Mittal also said the company is looking at a small controlled financial services business. He said this would focus on small-ticket lending to its own customer base, which it understands deeply. He said the investment would be significantly lower than the ₹20,000 crore total allocation over five years, of which Bharti’s share is ₹14,000 crore.
On Africa operations, Mittal said, “What India saw in the last 10 years, Africa will see in the next 10 years.” He said the company’s stake in Airtel Africa is currently 78%, and the ambition is to take it up to 90% or as permitted.
On capital discipline, he said: “We will never become like IT companies who have done nothing but just taken money out as dividends and buybacks, and they become a shadow of themselves. Many of those companies should have been buying leading edge businesses in their own industry in the last 10–15 years.”
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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)
