The telecom major plans to invest ₹20,000 crore in the NBFC over the next few years, with 70% of the equity coming from Bharti Airtel and the remaining 30% from the promoter group.
Bharti Airtel shares fell nearly 3% after the announcement.
“This ₹20,000 crore will be levered up, say, four or five times. So essentially, you are looking at assets under management (AUM) of around ₹80,000 crore to ₹1 lakh crore once fully built out. And from Airtel’s perspective we will have to see how this sorts of plays out,” Malhotra said.
But scale in lending is only one part of the equation.
Malhotra points out that digital lending typically hinges on two big variables: customer acquisition cost and credit underwriting. Airtel clearly has an edge on the first front. With hundreds of millions of subscribers and deep usage data, customer acquisition could be significantly cheaper compared to standalone fintech lenders.
The bigger question is credit quality.
Telecom data, recharge history and usage patterns may help assess risk, especially for customers who are new to credit. But translating alternate data into reliable underwriting models is easier said than done. The key monitorable will be delinquencies. Lending money is straightforward. Recovering it, particularly at scale, is where execution is tested.
Product strategy will also matter. Whether Airtel focuses on short-tenure products such as buy-now-pay-later, or moves toward longer-duration loans, will shape both growth and risk.
From a shareholder perspective, the ₹14,000 crore commitment from Bharti Airtel’s own balance sheet may sound large in isolation. But spread over three to four years, and seen against the company’s annual free cash flow generation, the investment is manageable. Importantly, Airtel has already signalled its intent to build out its financial services business, so this is not a sudden strategic pivot.
Does this make the stock more compelling?
Malhotra is cautious. Any value unlocking from the NBFC business is likely to be back-ended. Airtel’s core telecom operations are simply too large for a nascent lending business to materially move the needle in the near term.
But for now, it remains an execution story.
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(Edited by : alphadesk)
First Published: Feb 24, 2026 10:27 AM IST
