The Bharti Airtel group recorded strong growth in all segments of its business in India during its first quarter which ended 30th of June. The operator posted over a 40% increase in net income to Rs 1,554 crore ($244 million) with its consolidated revenues recording Rs 23,671 crore (US$371 million). The Operator also benefited from a one-time net gain from the sale of towers in four countries in Africa amounting to Rs 458 crore.
The group operator saw its data revenues growing close to 57% year-on-year to a record of Rs 3,459 crore (US$54 million). At the same time, Bharti Airtel's mobile data traffic reaches 119.8 billion megabytes in the quarter, recording a 86.5% year-on-year growth.
With its total customer base reaching 318.0 million, Bharti Airtel is now the third largest operator in the world.
Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, India & South Asia
The year has begun on a healthy note, with underlying revenue growth accelerating to 12.7% in India. Ourcustomer base has continued to steadily expand. Mobile minutes and data traffic have grown by 7.4% and 83.4% respectively. I am pleased that our revenue growth is broad based across all business units, especially the domestic enterprise & corporate segment, which saw revenues grow by 18.1%, and DTH business which had a underlying topline growth of 26.8%. Our capex programme is mostly directed at increasing 3G / 4Gcoverage and improving all-round customer experience.
Christian de Faria, MD and CEO, Africa
In the first quarter, Airtel Africa has set the pace for the year, with customer base growing by 13.4% to78.3 million. Customer churn has been reduced from 7.0% to 5.4%, as a result of customer lifecyclemanagement programmes. Minutes grew by 16.0%, while data volumes have more than doubled. The datacustomer penetration at 16.6% reflects the untapped potential in the internet space. I am particularly delightedto report that 7.0 million Airtel Money customers are transacting more than $ 1 billion of money every month.We are also satisfied with continued profitable growth in Nigeria.
