Good afternoon, and a very warm welcome to all of you. I have with me Gopal, Shashwat, Akhil, and Naval. I'll provide an update on our consolidated financials for the third quarter, after which I'll hand over to Shashwat to share highlights of our India business, including strategic priorities. We delivered another quarter of strong performance across India and Africa. Consolidated revenue came in at about INR 54,000 crore, growing 3.5% sequentially. Africa maintained its trajectory of solid performance, with constant currency revenue growth of 5.8%. India, excluding passive infra, grew at 2.1% sequentially. India Mobile delivered another quarter of strong revenue growth. Broadband saw sustained growth momentum. IPTV is scaling up rapidly and powering our conversion strategy. Underlying B2B performance improved sequentially. Digital portfolio is on a strong growth path.
More details on these pillars would be shared by Shashwat in his section. Consolidated EBITDA came in at over INR 27,700 crore, a growth of 4.2%. Our EBITDA margin stood at 51.3%, which is about 30 basis points improvement sequentially. Operating free cash flow, which is EBITDA minus CapEx, was a strong INR 15,900 crore. CapEx for the quarter was about INR 11,800 crore. Our operational excellence continues to be driven by our focus on portfolio premiumization, disciplined execution, and tight control over costs through our War on Waste initiatives. India EBITDA, excluding passive infra, came in at over INR 18,450 crore, growing at 2.8% sequentially. EBITDA margin stood at 51.8%, again, a 30 basis points improvement.
CapEx for the quarter was at about INR 7,100 crore. Operating free cash flow, which is EBITDA minus CapEx, was strong at over INR 11,350 crores. Our consolidated net debt to EBITDA improved to 1.02, with India now at 1.38. Our strong balance sheet demonstrates prudent capital allocation, disciplined CapEx, sustained operational excellence. Continued focus on balance sheet improvement is recognized by leading global agencies with rating upgrade during the quarter. I'll now provide an update on our investments and synergies that we are driving across India and Africa. Our investments are directed towards growth areas to future-proof Airtel, as well as gold plate our infrastructure to make it best in class for the years to come. We will judiciously invest to improve our footprint on network sites, as well as on transport.
In addition, we are investing across digital portfolio. This combination will help us drive competitive and profitable growth to ensure prudent capital recycling in future. On synergies, we see significant immense opportunities between India and Africa that include, first, portfolio premiumization; second, accelerating digital and growth in B2B. Third, War on Waste, which is central to us running our operations. Lastly, we are excited about the impact of the group-wide synergies that are now coming to bear in stepping up our performance in Africa. A number of areas have been picked up in this effort. One such area, our entire tech stack, has now been deployed into Africa. This is helping sharpen our go-to-market capability, our secret sauce of Airtel, and leading to stepped-up revenue growth in Africa. We believe there is a lot more to do around this.
With this, I'll now hand over to Shashwat for a detailed update on India business.
Good afternoon, everyone. Let me share with you an update on ESG in each of our business segments, followed with an update on our strategic priorities. Our ESG progress is being driven by the strategic use of technology and digital innovation, enabling more sustainable operations and greater efficiency. During the quarter, we solarized over 3,000 new sites, taking our total solar site count to 38,000. Today, I'll talk about the work our foundation is doing in providing access to quality education to underprivileged children. Over time, our focus is increasingly on digital inclusion across schools, helping bridge the learning and opportunity gaps for students who need it the most. 155 Satya Bharti Schools are spread across four states and are reaching 36,000 students. Girls comprise about 51% of this enrollment.
Through the Quality Support Program , we have reached over 420,000 students in over 1,100 government schools across 12 states and union territories. The foundation is also partnering with the NITI Aayog and multiple state governments, supporting the Teacher Professional Development Program through the Teacher App. Additionally, the foundation supports higher education with reputed national-level institutions and various scholarships. Lastly, we take pride in our transparent disclosures and high standards of governance, including ethics. Moving to a quick update on our businesses. Overall, our strategy of portfolio premiumization and execution rigor is delivering consistent performance. We continue to invest strongly on strengthening our networks, adding about 11,000 5G sites in the quarter. We now cover about 74% of population with 5G. Our step-up on fiber deployment continues strongly.
We rolled out over 11,000 kilometers of overall fiber and added about 2 million fiber home passes in the quarter. In mobility, we added 4.4 million revenue-earning customers and 5.2 million smartphone data consumers during the quarter. ARPU came in at INR 259, led by our continued efforts on premiumizing and improving our portfolio mix. Postpaid net adds came in at 0.6 million. International roaming is emerging as a focus area where we see a large growth opportunity. We continue to simplify our offering while enhancing our value and experience. Our efforts are yielding strong outcomes in international roaming revenues, and they're growing at over 30% year-over-year.
I want to emphasize that in the absence of tariff repair, we will continue to sweat ARPU growth, leveraging feature phone to smartphone upgrades, prepaid to postpaid upgrades, data monetization, and our international roaming services. Our 5G expansion is progressing as planned. I will delve deeper into it in a bit. We ended the quarter at 181 million 5G customers. Our share in 5G shipments is seeing sustained improvement. 5G handset penetration continues to grow, and over 90% of our total smartphones today come in as 5G. On broadband, we delivered another strong quarter with our highest-ever quarterly net adds of 1.2 million customers. We have crossed 13 million installed connected homes customer base. FWA continues to expand addressable market for us, and we are deepening our supply footprint with FWA.
This is reflected in strong momentum in FWA customer base, which now stands over 3 million. On digital TV, we added 73,000 customers during the quarter. The DTH industry continues to face macro headwinds. We are prioritizing profitable growth here. At the same time, we are seeing a very strong traction on our IPTV offering, which is driving strong momentum in customer growth. Moving to Airtel Business, its revenues came in at INR 5,350 crore, growing 1.5% sequentially. Our order book and funnel is strong. During the quarter, we secured multiple deals on connectivity and adjacencies, including Airtel Cloud, Cybersecurity, and IoT business. Nxtra is seeing strong growth, led by capacity augmentation and customer wins. Our digital portfolio delivered robust revenue growths and grew 39% over last year.
We continue to make strategic investments in our digital portfolio, spanning across cloud, cybersecurity, financial services, IoT, and CPaaS. Airtel Finance is delivering strong growth in loan disbursements and EMI card issuances. Monthly loan disbursement run rate now stands at over INR 500 crore. Payments Bank, its MTUs stand at about 108 million. Annualized revenue run rate has now crossed INR 3,250 crore, and it's growing sequentially year-on-year at 16%. Deposits remain strong at about INR 300 crore, growing 28% over a year. Let me now provide an update on our strategic pillars. First, our diversified and resilient portfolio. Underlying performance across the portfolio was strong. Africa accounts for about 27% of our revenues, India Mobile, 53%, India Non-Mobile, 13%, and Indus, 7%.
Our investments underpin our long-term strategy, that is, of future-proofing Airtel through digitally powered networks, a sharper growth-oriented portfolio, and building scalable digital services. Second area is winning quality customers. Let me start with broadband. We continue to see large opportunity ahead of us in this market, with a potential of 100 million connected homes over the medium term. FWA is expanding addressable market and supply and is accelerating adoption. To capitalize on this opportunity, we are focusing in three areas. First is to accelerate our supply through rapid network expansion, led by fiber and deepening our FWA footprint with 5G rollouts. Over the last two years, we have expanded our fiber footprint in over 300 additional cities. We now have fiber presence in over 1,500 cities, while FWA is live in over 3,200 cities.
Second focus area is to offer content as a primary use case to drive adoption and customer engagement. For this, we offer the most comprehensive bouquet of regional and global content to more than 29 OTT platforms, bundled with over 650 TV channels. The third focus area is to drive growth across our channels. Over the last few quarters, we have integrated our channels, and all our channels now sell all services, which has driven our acceleration. We see significant headroom ahead to sweat our distribution network by leveraging digital tools and data science to improve the quality of acquisitions and productivity in our channels. Let me now switch to mobility. Portfolio premiumization through precision and data science continues to unlock ARPU for us. Our strategy is to upgrade 90 million prepaid core customers to our postpaid services.
As I mentioned earlier, we see a significant opportunity in international roaming portfolio. Our rural expansion continues its growth momentum, while we continue to strengthen our 5G footprint in line with the handset growth that we are seeing in the industry. Let me now turn to B2B. I'll provide some texture on our revenue construct first. About 45% of our revenue comes from core connectivity. This is an industry that is growing at 5%-6% annually. Here, we are growing competitively and strengthening our leadership position. Another 30% of our revenues come from our digital portfolios and the adjacencies, which is growing at about 20%, and the remaining 25% is contributed by wholesale data and voice. Here, the growth is a bit challenged. We see large growth opportunities across core connectivity, data center, digital, and adjacencies....
To capitalize on the growth opportunities, we are deeply focused on three areas. First is to build low-latency, flat list fiber networks, expand our subsea cable presence, augment data center to data center connectivity, and our OPGW infrastructure. This will help us accelerate our core connectivity growth from data center and lock-in enterprise customers. Second, we have stepped up our investment in data centers business under Nxtra. Our plan is to reach one gigawatt capacity in the next three to four years and grow significantly ahead of the market. Third, we are strengthening our capabilities in digital portfolio. With a portfolio of cloud, IoT, cybersecurity, CPaaS, and SD-WAN. In Airtel Cloud, we are investing in building a suite of products and services. Our cloud business is already seeing strong traction.
Within a short span of time, we have signed over 16 deals with over 300 ongoing conversations with customers across sectors, with a focus on BFSI and manufacturing. Our digital stack, where our engagement with existing customers are getting deeper, and we have conversations with multiple potential customers that are at advanced stages. The third pillar of our strategy is the obsession to deliver brilliant customer experience. Delivering an exceptional customer experience remains paramount for us. Our digital experience layer, powered by Converged Data Engine, is driving greater velocity in our ways of working and enabling deeper customer engagement. This continues to be an underlying driver of consistency in our performance. We have made significant progress in enhancing network performance with digital tools and data science. We have now rolled out 5G standalone Pan-India on both FWA and mobile services.
Most of our FWA customers across circles are now on 5G standalone network, experiencing superior uplink speeds. The mobile customer base is transitioning in a phased manner to SA, keeping customer experience in mind. As stated before, we will continue to run both SA and NSA modes of 5G for our mobile customers based on their handset readiness to deliver optimum experience. To drive our next leg of growth, we are also stepping up investments towards building further resiliency in our transport network and also in modernizing our overall networks. Our incremental spends will be directed towards growth areas, including acceleration in data centers and some pullback of 5G CapEx with growing device adoption. This we see as a critical step to future-proof our seamless experience to our customers and unlock growth potential. The fourth pillar of our strategy is to build and leverage our digital capabilities.
We are now embedding AI at the center of everything we do, marking a clear shift from experimentation to scaled up and business-wise deployment. For us, AI is anchored on four core objectives. The first is to accelerate revenue growth through persuasion and precision-based targeting for our customers. Second is building differentiation in our products and offerings. Our industry-first AI-powered anti-spam solution continues to deliver significant relief to our customers. Since its launch, it has identified over 71 billion spam calls, 2.9 billion spam SMS, and blocked over 7 lakh fraudulent links. We continue to add features to our anti-spam solution, and you will hear more on this in the quarters to come. Third is to drive operational excellence through AI and lowering costs and improving productivity. And the fourth area is to help elevate our customer experience with proactive fault management and self-healing network tools.
Our AI models are continuously evolving and generating deeper insights, fundamentally reshaping our ways of working. Let me share a few examples first. Today, AI dynamically optimizes power for our radio layers based on real-time traffic through an automated cell wake and sleep cycles, powered by intelligent traffic profiling, leading to significant cost savings without any human intervention. Our capacity planning for new rollouts is now deeply backed by data science, enabling precision in decision-making. This is reflected in our cost-effective rollout expansion that we have done of over 45,000 rural sites. Nearly 70% of all our customer calls are today handled by self-serving voice bots, significantly improving customer experience, service quality, and frontline productivity. The fifth and last pillar of our strategy is War on Waste. We continue to de-average our costs to identify and eliminate wasteful spends.
We are leveraging AI and digital tools to amplify our efforts and drive sustainable savings. A prime example of this is our site running cost, which has declined by over 6% in last four years, despite accelerated rollouts and addition of new technology layers. So to sum up, overall, we delivered another quarter of steady performance, underpinned by the strength of our diversified portfolio and razor-sharp execution. We see significant growth opportunities in ARPU-led growth, postpaid, broadband, and B2B. Our investments across the portfolio are focused towards unlocking these opportunities and the new bets to future-proof Airtel. Digital acceleration and AI adoption is central to our strategy. Our balance sheet strength underscores our disciplined capital allocation, focus on deleveraging, and sustained operational excellence, creating a solid foundation for future growth investments. With that, let me hand it over back to Vaidehi for the Q&A session.
Thank you very much, Shashwat. We will now begin the Bharti Airtel Q&A interactive session for all the participants. Please note that the Q&A session will be restricted to the analyst and investor community only. Due to time constraints, we would request if you could limit the number of questions to two per participant to enable more participation. Interested participants may click on Raise Hand option on the Zoom application to join the Q&A queue. Upon announcement of name, participants to kindly click on Unmute Myself in the pop-up screen and start asking the question post interview. Participants are requested to limit their questions to Bharti Airtel till 3:30 P.M., as the management will start the Q&A discussion on Bharti Hexacom from 3:30 P.M. onwards. With this, the first question comes from Mr. Manish Adukia. Mr. Adukia, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Hi, good afternoon. This is Manish Adukia from Goldman Sachs. Thank you so much for taking my question, and, Shashwat, congratulations on your new role. Couple of questions. First, when I look at, let's say, your wireless business, I think for the first time since before COVID or for the last five or six years, your revenue growth has fallen to below 10%. While we do see the evidence of premiumization in terms of data or postpaid subscriber adds, the fact is that as the base becomes larger, the ability to drive growth probably ends up becoming smaller and smaller.
So in that context, and I know you've talked about tariff repair in the past, but till what extent would you be okay for your revenue growth to decelerate before you take a view that you definitely need to, you know, take the first step from a tariff repair perspective? And without that, how are you thinking about revenue growth potentially accelerating, in the foreseeable future, in that segment? That's my first question. Thank you.
So maybe I'll take that. You know, I think, yes, there has been, Manish, an overall sort of softening in market growth on wireless. I think that's been the case for the last couple of years. Market growth in wireless has been averaging about 6%. You know, if you strip out tariff repair, the drivers of premiumization continue to be the same as we've always seen. You know, which is the feature phone to smartphones, prepaid to postpaid, data penetration, international roaming. So all of that remain intact. I think we, we have to find, you know, more creative avenues to continue to push on ARPU, and I think that's really the effort of, of the company in the absence of tariff repair. Yeah.
Sorry, just to probe a little bit deeper on that, when you say creative avenues, do we have something on the horizon, or is it, like, still too early?
I mean, experiments are always ongoing, Manish. So, you know, we keep trying out stuff, and we have AB testing that happens across geographies. So that's something that I think, the team is looking at.
Got it. Thank you. Second set of question, just on CapEx, if you can just provide an update. I know on the previous earnings call, a fair bit of discussion happened around data centers, and of course, since then, the world on, at least on AI, has continued to move rapidly. Any update on your data center ambitions, updated CapEx plans? And in that context, if also you can help us understand the rationale for calling, the remaining amount of the rights issue and what drove that. Thank you.
Yeah, I think let me take the second part first, Manish. I think, you know, there was. We've already sort of given that there was a timeframe of three years, which is now over. We had no provision to foreclose the call on the rights issue, so we've called it. The deployment of these funds will clearly be done to ensure, you know, long-term value creation, and that's really how we will, we will approach it. As far as CapEx is concerned, I've always, you know, mentioned that, you know, we, we've seen in the last couple of years moderation in radio CapEx, a step up in homes CapEx, CapEx, step up in, in some of our transport CapEx.
But I think one of the places that we are not particularly satisfied about is the fact that our data center market shares are quite low. It's a very fragmented market, and we are about 12% market share on the overall data center market. We have about 120 MW-130 MW of power. So we're in that ballpark, and our sense is that in the next 3 years -4 years, this will become about a GW type market. And we will have about a gigawatt capacity, which will give us about 25% share. So we are committed to stepping up investments in data centers.
I think at this point in time, I can't give you a CapEx guidance, but clearly you will see us investing more and more behind data centers. I think there's no question about that in my mind.
Thanks a lot. Maybe if just one last question I can sneak in. The AGR issue just doesn't seem to go away, and now, with Vodafone Idea having gotten this AGR relief and your own AGR payments starting in March, which is about $1 billion, and you obviously also have recurring spectrum payouts, which Vodafone Idea has gotten converted into equity. So I think in that context, how are you thinking about your repayment liabilities to the government of India, both for AGR and spectrum? I mean, what do you think are the likely potential outcomes or scenarios through which maybe you also could have a lower, cash flow payout or, or pressure from these two, both spectrum and AGR? If any thoughts there? Thank you.
We have written a few letters to the DoT, asking for clarification and basically requesting parity on the treatment of the AGR dues. We are yet to hear from the DoT. Once we hear from the DoT, we will then decide what our next steps are. So I think that's all that we have actually on information on the AGR. These letters have already been sent, and we're awaiting their response.
Got it. Thank you for taking my questions. All the best.
The next question comes from Mr. Piyush Choudhary. Mr. Choudhary, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Yeah, hi, good afternoon. This is Piyush from HSBC. You know, first question, you know, again, just, on the capital allocation strategy and, and the use of, money which is coming from the rights issue. Given, you know, free cash flow is improving, and deleveraging has also happened, is there a probability that, we can also think of a special dividend or, stepping up meaningfully on the dividend? And, if you can share, you know, some light on this. Secondly, you know, just on the data center business, Singtel has announced, to acquire a stake in STT GDC earlier this week, which has also a good footprint in India. Could there be opportunities for Airtel and STT GDC in India to partner together and accelerate the pace of DC rollout?
Is that something which is possible?
Yeah. Thank you, Piyush, for both those questions. I think, you know, the, I think we have always mentioned that as far as dividend is concerned, we will see a progressive dividend policy. You've already seen that play out over the last couple of years. You will continue to see that, play out, and I think the, the rights issue has really nothing to do with that at this stage. The rights issue was a call because, as I mentioned, you know, we didn't have an option to foreclose it. And capital allocation, as far as we're concerned, will be really, you know, first and foremost, our investments will be directed on the core, the core business.
The second area of focus will be around adjacencies, which we've already talked about, data centers, cloud, you know, increasingly some of the scaling, some of our lending businesses and financial services businesses. And, you know, many years ago, we also invested in Africa. That has turned out to be an excellent investment. It's given us tremendous resilience in the portfolio. So I think capital allocation will continue to be along these areas. On the data center side, yeah, we all seen the announcement by STT and Singtel, and there could be opportunities. I think the opportunities like this keep coming to us. We have nothing to report at this point in time because it's still sort of very early days, so we'll wait and watch how that plays out.
Sure. And if I may just ask one thing, you had this Perplexity Pro offer, so could you update, like, how many customers are using it? How is the data usage for that cohort of customers? And are you seeing, increasing uploads from users which have adopted AI, which could warrant any change in network design, from a upload capacity perspective? Thanks.
It's too early. I think, you know, the thesis that globally is being talked about is that there could be some implications on AI and, and the way uplink performance or the uplink strategy needs to be planned for in the network design. But it is too small at this point in time to make a meaningful impact, and this is not just in India, this is all across the world. We've had, you know, many conversations with several telcos, so it's still not sort of playing out yet. On Perplexity, you know, we've, we can't-- we're not gonna disclose the exact numbers, but I would say that there has been a very significant uptake of customers. In fact, the first few days of the launch, we saw it reaching a few millions.
You know, some of the revenue streams that can be driven out of this is the adoption of a paid package on Perplexity, which will give us a revenue share as well. So I think that's really the way we see.
Okay.
But this was a sampling exercise that Perplexity was keen to do on the Airtel base, given the quality of the user.
Got it. Thanks, Gopal.
The next question comes from Mr. Sanjesh Jain. Mr. Jain, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Hi, this is Sanjesh here from ICICI Securities. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on the 5G side, we have seen a decent adoption, and on the other end, we are seeing the revenue growth decelerating. Can we think of a more differentiated pricing between the 4G, 5G? We know that we start with 2 GB, but that's only INR 50, kind of a premiumization. Anything there? Are we thinking in terms of accelerating the 5G pricing faster than the 4G? That's number one. Number two, I think 5G also gives us an opportunity to provide a differentiated priority-based services because it gives a spectrum slicing kind of a capability. That can also bring in a lot of premiumization or a customer who are willing to pay for the better quality services.
Can these kind of offerings possible in India? Today, we still see a regulatory hurdle for this.
Shashwat, you want to take that?
Yeah. Gopal, I'll, I'll answer that. So Sanjesh, thank you for that. I think, first of all, on 5G pricing, I think for the customer, the 5G versus 4G pricing, we'll have to rethink, but the reality is customer will have to pay for data eventually. If the ARPUs have to move up, I think we have to keep reading and look at really a differential pricing architecture where people pay more for more, instead of looking at differential 5G or 4G pricing, because that creates a little bit of confusion in the market, and customers don't know what they're using. So I think that pricing paradigm and architecture discussion that we have had is still playing out, and I think we need to do a lot more on that side for getting ARPU growth.
I mean, so there are the new capabilities on 5G, which is linked to slicing network on demand or other advanced features are very much becoming a reality. I think they are lighting up in, as capabilities across the world, and it's ready for India as well. So you'll see this movie play out in the next few quarters.
But we are not testing any of those today live in some of the markets to see if it really is a feasible option?
W e are on market, but the capabilities are in our labs, et cetera, are pretty much we have them with us. It's a matter of time.
On the regulatory hurdle, do you see any regulatory hurdle there, net neutrality or any of those issues popping up?
I think this is, Sanjesh, this is a standard feature of 5G technology all over the world. So, you know, we've seen, or let's say it's, you know, some part of 5G technology around the SA network. We can also do it on NSA, but largely on the SA network. And, you've seen this, you know, for example, T-Mobile in the U.S. has launched a first responder slice for the police and the defense. Singtel has done something in Singapore around certain areas. So, you know, you are not in any way discriminating use. What you're doing is actually using the intrinsic feature of the technology, and the massive investments that have been made for this technology warrant you to find ways to actually leverage the full potential of that technology.
So that's really what it is. So this has nothing to do with net neutrality because there is no discrimination in any way of any content. So I think this is a myth that is there in the, you know, in some misplaced quarters.
That's, that's very clear. Thanks, Gopal, for that. My next question on the data center. Now, the government has given a tax, so for the cloud provider globally, are we in discussion or customer - I know it's too early days, but how do you see that opportunity panning out for our data center business?
Yeah, as you said, it's early days, but I think that the, the demand for data centers, our estimation is that this will certainly fuel that demand. And with the availability of land, you know, green power, which today most of our data centers today already have, the maximum use of green power. We do think that we have a role to play, given our heft, our capital, that we can allocate towards this, and the deep relationships we have with customers all around the world. So we are, we are certainly going to pursue this and find ways by which we can step up our data center business. I think that's going to be a, a big, area of focus for, for the business.
Got it, got it. One last question, Gopal, on AGR. I know you have answered it earlier, but, are we, are we in discussion also for the reassessment of our dues? Because I think that will be very large and very critical for us.
I think, Sanjesh, currently, we have asked for a treatment of parity, and there are, you know, many areas which warrant this parity. One of these areas, for example, is just sort of computation errors, arithmetical errors, errors of commission, errors of omission. And, you know, so these are areas that we have written to DoT on an assessment, which is on the basis of parity based on the Supreme Court verdict. We, as I said, you know, we are waiting to hear from them, and then we'll decide what we do from there.
Got it. Got it. Thanks, Gopal. Thanks, Shashwat, for all those answers and best of luck with them for us.
The next question comes from Mr. Vivekanand Subbaraman. Mr. Subbaraman, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Hello. Hi, I'm Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. My first question is on the enterprise revenue growth. Shashwat, if you could help us understand the scalability of this business now that you have mostly shed your low-margin, wholesale voice business. How should one think about the next three-year growth trajectory from a revenue standpoint? And what are the CapEx opportunities outside of data centers? That's question one. I'll ask the second one after you answer this.
Let me take that one, Vivekanand. I think, you know, the B2B business, the B2B... firstly, let me step back and look at the B2B market. The B2B market in India, the top 500 companies account for about 65%-70% of the overall industry. So it's very concentrated on the top, and this is not unusual to India. This is true across most parts of the world. Secondly, if you look at it, the core business, which is the core connectivity business, and in the core connectivity business, I would include connectivity, I would include CPaaS and things like that. Typically, the growth that you see in that side of the industry are in the ballpark of 5%-6%, so it's like sort of middle single-digit growth.
And then you've got the digital businesses, which are things like IoT, cloud, security. Those businesses together are growing at almost 15%-20%, and today have become actually even larger than the connectivity business, so the opportunity there is massive. Right? Now, if you look at our portfolio, our portfolio comprises, if you leave the data center part aside, our portfolio comprises three types of businesses. One is the core business, which is a core connectivity business, where we have been punching well above our weight. We continue to punch well above our weight. Our growths are well ahead of the 5%-6%, which is industry growth.
The second component of this business is the digital side of the portfolio, which is really our, you know, cloud, cybersecurity, our IoT businesses, which are now growing at about 30%, but need to accelerate further because that market is very large, and we have small shares in it. The third component of the business is commodity businesses, which are... one was the low-margin business, which we shed. The other is stuff like incoming voice, which is international termination, some commodity messaging businesses. These are more or less flat, and one of the challenges or one of the jobs to be done for us is to retool our portfolio-...
At an accelerated pace, and grow the whole of the, you know, parts that are really growing rapidly, which is the digital businesses as well as the core, while managing the fact that the commodity businesses are not growing. I think that the consequence of that, all of that, is that we end up with double-digit growth. For example, if you take this year, this quarter, we had a double-digit growth on the B2B business. If I remove the low margin sort of businesses aside, because there's a base effect. Remember, there was a low margin business in the same quarter last year. If I shed that, the underlying business is growing at 10%, which should show up in coming quarters if we do well. Now, the question is: What do we do to accelerate this?
The acceleration will come through the portfolio that, that slowly diminishes in contribution, which is the commodity side, but more importantly, the acceleration on the digital side and continued outperformance on core. I think that's really the strategy on the B2B businesses. Within the digital businesses, we have made our moves already. We've launched our cloud, for which we are having, as Shashwat mentioned, several conversations with customers. We've got our IoT business, which has been doing exceedingly well. Our security business is now growing strongly, both our SOC as well as the partnerships that we've assembled, and all of these businesses need to grow much faster. In IoT, we have done exceptionally, because there we have very, very leading shares, and that business has done really well and continues to do well.
Thank you, Gopal. Very helpful. Just one follow-up here. You mentioned about the conversations that you are having with several customers on the cloud side. Now, the wins that you showcased recently on Xtelify Cloud were telco clients. Are you also in conversation with non-telco clients who could perhaps leverage on some of your solutions, like Xtelify Work? And how likely are you to be able to win over business from those customers? And lastly, in this context, who are you competing with?
So, the... You know, I think you are mixing up two things, and I just want to clarify. The cloud business is an India cloud meant for domestic enterprises. The conversations that I talked about, the 16 odd contract deals that we've signed, the multiple, you know, couple of 100 conversations that are on, is amongst domestic enterprises. It's nothing to do with telco solutions, right? So that is one business. The other is our digital platforms, which we are taking globally to other telcos, because those are telco platforms, and we're taking those aside. There, you know, we've won two deals, one of which is now getting much deeper, where we're actually winning repeat businesses across a bunch of things that we've already done.
The second is that we are in the final stages with another couple, and we are having conversations with many more. That is a very different business. These two businesses are not together. Both happen to run on the cloud, but one is a software business, the other is a cloud.
Thank you, Gopal, for the clarity. My second question is on your portfolio. What are the strategic actions that one should expect from your portfolio, given there was a lot of activity in the last one and a half years in this regard? You increased shareholding in Airtel Africa meaningfully, Indus has become a subsidiary, and you may also have more plans in the next three years. If you can outline that, it'll be great. Thank you.
I think it's premature for me to outline that in specific terms, but all I would say is that Africa has been a phenomenal investment for us. I think the reason that we stepped up our investment in Airtel Africa is simply because we thought it was an undervalued asset. You know, you can see that clearly having played out, the stock and the price of the African asset has all more or less kind of doubled in the recent, let's say, 5-6 quarters. So this has been a really, really good asset, and the outperformance now on constant currency has always been there. I mean, we've been consistently growing now for several quarters at about 20%+.
And in fact, now with the currency having stabilized, particularly the Naira, and in fact hardened a little bit, you know, that's also showing through now in reported numbers because actually it's the other way around. The reported growth is now higher than the constant currency growth. So this whole, you know, currency volatility is the only risk in Africa, but if you take a long-term view over a 10-12-year period, you typically factor in, let's say, a 5%-7% devaluation per year, and that's the cost of doing business in that continent. But that continent presents tremendous opportunity and, you know, both because it's got a young population, penetration is low, pricing structure is, is good, and industry structure is sorted in most markets we operate in.
We are either number one or number two in almost every country we play in. So this was the reason that we, we decided to, you know, invest more in Africa, and that's been proven out well. We'll continue to look at opportunities wherever we feel there is some value to be made, wherever that we feel that we want, want to double down. So those are things that we will keep looking at as a board and decide from time to time.
Many thanks for the rich answers. All the very best.
Interested participants may click on Raise Hand option on your Zoom application to join the Q&A queue, please. And upon announcement of name, participants to kindly click on Unmute Myself in the pop-up screen to start asking the question. The next question comes from Mr. Gaurav Rateria. Mr. Rateria, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself and ask your question now.
Hi, I am Gaurav from Morgan Stanley. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions. My first one is on your net adds in the 4G/5G customer base. It's one of the best in class when you look at in the industry at 20 million plus on a YOY basis... but when I look at from a one-year or two-year perspective, it used to be at 30 million. So, obviously, the net adds have slowed down a bit. Is it because the overall smartphone net adds have slowed down in terms of the pace of addition? And what do you think would have driven that? Is it temporary? Is it a, you know, change in the replacement cycle? Any insight there will be helpful. My second question is on your FWA incremental market share.
When you look at the incremental net adds for your FWA, do you look at including UBR? And, and in that context, you know, there is room for significant improvement in the incremental market share. Would you agree with that? And the last question is on CapEx. You know, 2022, we used to be around INR 20,000-22,000 crore of CapEx, which we stepped up for the rollout of 5G. And then that number went up all the way to INR 28,000 crore - INR 34,000 crore in that range for the last three years. When you look at, look at the next three years' journey, given that the accelerated rollout of 5G is behind us, do you think that the pace at which we have been increasing CapEx, that investment, will moderate in absolute terms? Thank you.
Shashwat, do you want to take the first couple of questions?
Yeah, Gopal, I was saying. Let me take the first 2 questions, then I'll pass on the CapEx back to you. On the 4G, 5G net adds, you're right about the fact that the industry is seeing a slowdown in terms of the total number of net adds the industry was doing a couple of years back, I think 2 years , 3 years back. Very difficult to handle why it is happening, except the one thing which is saying with some of the tariffs hardening over the last 2 cycles, I think there have been a little bit of SIM consolidation that's happened in the industry, but the organic rate of, and the funnel that is there in terms of now bottom-end feature phones, et cetera, has come down.
Mathematically, those two reasons are the only reasons I could allude to, but hard to pin down, saying why this is—what has led to this overall. But you're right, the industry is seeing less net adds overall. Our share of net adds on 4G, 5G have continued to hold, and, and that's an area we'll, we'll continue to push at. On FWA versus UBR, I think the right way of looking at this, Gaurav, is we look at it as Wi-Fi net adds. I think for us, the market and the customer-facing approach is Wi-Fi. And, and then you have access technology. It could be fiber, it could be FWA, it could be UBR. Now, in terms of Wi-Fi, we have, we have significantly upped our competitive performance, I think, and we are, we are actually quite confident that we are now leading the market.
I think, Gopal, I alluded to this last quarter, which was that we are. We look at Meta as our data for us to look at competitive performance, and there we are seeing a strong performance that we are seeing on the customer side. Our approach is fiber first. We believe that's the best experience for the customer, and we want to have as many customers as possible on fiber. FWA augments this, and wherever we have had supply gaps, we have augmented with 5G and FWA rollout. As required, we'll judiciously bring in UBR into the mix as well. But that's how we look at it, so I'm not looking at incremental market share on FWA and UBR and separately in the way we look at the business. On the CapEx, Gopal, I'll leave it to you. Yeah.
Yeah, on CapEx, I think, yes, you're right. You know, we had an elevated year of CapEx on, which is about INR 34,000 crore. I think that was a couple of years back, where there was a massive rollout that we were doing. I think, you know, we still have, we still have investment to make. Like I said, I think on our transport side, I think if I could find a way to invest more on transport to fiber up more towers, I think we would do it. It's just a question of doability. So transport will continue to get its fair share. I think the, the radio CapEx on coverage, where, you know, you're talking about new sites, that will, that has clearly slowed down because a large part of the country is now covered.
So there will be some opportunities here and there, but that's, that's slowed down. 5G, there still is room to continue to expand. Remember that today, the devices that are coming in, almost 90% of all smartphones that are being shipped are 5G-ready devices. So over time, if you play this movie forward over the next 4 years -5 years, you could have a disproportionate amount of devices with 5G and 4G slowly sort of petering off. And that has implications on, on how much 5G coverage you need over time, because it's a, it's a, it's an opportunity to reform spectrum away from 5G, offload it onto a more efficient technology. So that's really the second port of call that will keep happening over time.
The third area, which I did talk about, but I will again underscore, is that in the next 2 years -3 years, we will see a stepped-up investment in data centers. Now, all of that, whether that leads to, you know, what the CapEx actually comes to, we'll come to, but I think one thing that you can trust us on is that we'll be prudent, we'll be disciplined, and we will make sure that every dollar that is spent goes to create value for us.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
The next question comes to Mr. Pranav Kshatriya. Mr. Kshatriya, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I'm Pranav Kshatriya from Emkay Global. My question is, with respect to the capital structure of the company. If you look at the balance sheet, I think it has never been this good, you know, only, you know, basically one times net debt to EBITDA. For a optimal capital structure, you know, can be anywhere between two to three times net debt to EBITDA. So clearly there is at least INR 150,000 crore-INR 200,000 crore kind of, you know, capital which is available. You talked about data center rollout. Do you think, you know, that is where you can possibly look for some, some inorganic opportunities? Or you think, there could be some, some, you know, return of capital, which is possible?
How do you think, you know, we should look at the capital structure of the company, over the next two to three years, given, you know, strong cash generation? And even if you talk about accelerated CapEx, you know, that will not really, you know, suck up so much of capital. So that's my question. Thank you.
Yeah, Pranav, this is a very good question. I think this is, you know, on leverage. Airtel is now one of the lowest leveraged telcos globally within the industry. In fact, the external net debt, if you take the external net debt without the finance lease obligations and without the DoT debt, which is almost like a think of the DoT debt almost like a, you know, an annual payout based on a right to use. So it's not even a debt, and in a way it's just a right to use kind of a debt. So if you remove the finance lease obligations and the DoT debt, the external net debt is almost down to nothing, right? So...
I think you are absolutely right in the way that you are looking at this at this issue. For us, I think we you know, one, we are constantly looking at what we can do to step up investments in order to drive growth. Data centers is clearly a play that we wanna be large on. Obviously, you know, we will be keen to look at you know, where there are opportunities to consolidate a fragmented industry. It's got to be at the right value, it's got to be done with the right kind of partner. So that's something that we will certainly look at. On the cloud, we've already made a reasonable investment, and we are committed to dramatically stepping up investments if needed.
This is an area that we are again doubling down on. There's a lot of work that's going on just the product capability. There are over 116 features that really require that you need on the cloud for you to be a very good competitive cloud. We've built most of those features. We're also looking for certification with MeitY on being constituted as a sovereign cloud. We think the geopolitical you know implications that are playing out across the world will lead to more and more need for data to be hosted in India with the right jurisdiction. There's an opportunity for strong sovereign play here, and you know from our perspective, we will do what we need to to make the investment.
So that's the second area where we will look at. And we're also looking to see whether there could be opportunities to, you know, add to the portfolio within the B2B space. Again, we've been looking around for the last couple of years. We haven't found anything interesting or exciting, and that is something that we'll continue to look at. So all of those opportunities will be looked at, in addition, of course, to the core business getting its due share of investments.
Just to follow up here, can we expect, you know, leverage to come back to 2x once we see the opportunities over the next 2 years -3 years? That may not happen, and in that case, you might want to return the capital.
I think that we are not at that point at this stage to, you know, do this. I think, you know, we think that there is still a lot of growth in this market, and that's the place that we are really gonna be focused on right now.
Okay, thank you. That's it from my side. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Mr. Arun Prasath. Mr. Prasath, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. This is Arun from Nuvama Institutional Equities. My first question is on the 5G FWA. Gopal and Shashwat, can you qualify what is our churn rate in FWA, 5G FWA? So far, is it closer to the wireless or is it closer to the wireline? And also, we have also spoke about, you know, eventually the upgrading the 5G FWA homes to the connected wired, wired homes. Is there any progress on that front? That is my first question.
I think we, you know, we don't disclose the churn by, by this. I think the churn that we look at is an overall churn. Obviously, we, you know, we deaverage this, and we look at it in a granular way and see where the opportunities are. I think in the past, as we started with FWA, we did see, you know, modestly higher levels of churn because it was being put in the wrong places where we didn't have the right experience. I think those problems are now getting behind us. Theoretically, you should actually see a much lower churn on fixed wireless access because there is no fiber, there's no cut, there's nothing.
I mean, once you put the radio up there, it should be working unless there's a capacity problem at the radio end on the site. So that's the theory. I think the thesis always is to actually shift fixed wireless access to fiber. That was really the original plan. In fact, a lot of our fiber planning that we do is a function of the total amount of smartphones in a specific polygon. We divide the country into 1 million micro markets. We look at the polygon and see where are the smartphones and where do we need to deploy fiber. And of course, if you've got fixed wireless access, then clearly that becomes the first port of call to put in fiber.
The only constraint that we will have to deal with as we make that shift from fixed wireless access to fiber is that in some cases, you may need to go back into the customer's home for some wiring to be done, because where you put the router for the customer, the terminal box for the customer may be slightly different from where the fixed wireless access CPE is actually deployed. So that's the only thing that we will need to sort of deal with, but we are not at that stage right now.
I think that, if we find the right proposition, I have no doubt that we'll be able to translate and move some of those fixed wireless access customers to fiber, because our strategy is to actually then take that same fixed wireless access and then deploy it elsewhere. But we're not at that stage right now. Right now, it's still very much a land grab phase.
That doesn't mean our network requirements, because we are still largely dependent on FWA, and as this FWA's customer base scales up. Do we see a scenario where we need to step up, say, investment in infill towers or additional spectrum, to service these FWA customers?
No, we're not at that stage at all. I mean, the amount of headroom for supply is very high. And, don't forget, we are rolling out 2 million home passes a quarter, so fiber home passes a quarter.
Yeah.
We are really stepped up on our fiber home passes every quarter. And, you know, we are trying to see, can we do more of this? And at one day, you know, today, the total number of broadband homes are about 45 million -46 million. One day, not in the very distant future, could be about maybe 4 years or 5 years, this will be 100 million. And our effort is, you know, to try and get fiber into every nook and corner of this 100 million homes. So that increasingly you have more fiber, because that's the best way to deliver home broadband.
Sure. Upon my second question is on, like, once again, on the capital allocation CapEx. We see we are on track to almost generate INR 50,000 crore of free cash flow from India business. This after considering our normal CapEx across wireless, wireline, and enterprise. Even if we consider the data centers scaling up from current 150 gigawatt to 1 gigawatt hour, it's still our one year equivalent to one year of our free cash flow. So question is, are we running out of avenues to invest this kind of a huge cash flows every year? The problem typically faced by the telcos in the developed markets, are we getting into that zone? Can we, can we step up our investment profitably in other adjacent areas?
Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's a good problem to have. Like I said, I think there are three ports of call right now. One is data centers, the second is cloud, and the third is, you know, opportunities in financial services. And, you know, this is, you know, one of the reasons that we have put in place a succession where Shashwat runs the India business. And I have more, a little more time to actually look at some of these areas, is really the deployment of this for growth. So this is an area that we will certainly be, you know, continuing to look at, but it's a good problem to have.
Right. So that means, more inorganic, kind of, opportunities only for this?
I don't have an answer to your question right now.
Okay.
Other than the things that we're already clear about.
Okay, on the list we're getting out, Gopal. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. I would now like to remind the participants to stay connected on the call for the next session on Bharti Hexacom. With this, I would like to pass over to Shashwat for his closing remarks for Bharti Airtel.
Thanks, Vaidehi. I want to thank everyone on the call for joining the earnings call. I think it was a very, very interactive and, perceptive questions, very interactive session. Thank you all, and I'll see you next quarter. See you.
Thank you, Shashwat. With this, I would now like to pass over the call to Mr. Soumen Ray for his opening remarks on Bharti Hexacom performance.
Thank you, Vaidehi, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Bharti Hexacom Q3 FY26 earnings call. I have with me Kartik and Naval joining on the call. We delivered yet another quarter of consistent performance, with revenue of about INR 2,360 crore, growing about 1.8% sequentially. EBITDA for the quarter came in at over INR 1,120 crore, with a margin of 47.6%. We ended the quarter with a mobile customer base of 28.4 million. Net customer addition for the quarter came in at about 370,000. Smartphone customer additions were strong, at 283,000. ARPU for the quarter was at INR 253, driven by our focus on quality customers and portfolio premiumization.
Our home business is seeing robust growth acceleration with a record high net add of 73,000, driving revenue growth to over 10% sequentially. FWA expansion to newer pin codes and continued deepening of our FTTH footprint is driving this growth for us. We have launched IPTV services in Rajasthan and Northeast, which will amplify and align with our convergence strategy. Operating free cash generation, which is EBITDA minus CapEx, was a strong INR 784 crore. Our balance sheet is robust, with a net debt excluding leases at about INR 2,160 crore, and a net debt to EBITDA below 1. With that, I hand over to Vaidehi to open the Q&A floor for questions.
Thank you, Soumen. With this, the first question comes from Mr. Vivekanand Subbaraman. Mr. Subbaraman, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Hi, I'm Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Capital. My first question is on the operating leverage that you have in your business model. So if I look at, let's say, one more round of tariff repair, which could happen, say, sometime this year or the year after, how do we think about the operating leverage from an incremental EBITDA flow-through to the new revenue that comes from the tariff repair? That is question one. The second one is, your balance sheet is even more conservative compared to Bharti Airtel, so how do we think about the capital structure and capital reinvestment opportunities, let's say, for fiscal 2027 and beyond as well? Thank you.
Thank you, Vivekanand. On the first question, which is around operating leverage, there have been past tariff increases. Unfortunately, in this industry, we have tariff increases which happens after long durations. Of course, our ARPU continues to grow through the various tools that we have, like premiumization, interventions, upgrades, and so on and so forth. However, there is also a cost creep which happens due to inflation, part of which is negated by our War on Waste initiatives. So I think you should look at it not as a point in time, but as a trailing thing, wherein costs will keep growing, and we will try to optimize on how we can increase our ARPU to minimize that impact of cost increase. And when tariff comes, tariff comes on a big time way on a certain day. So on that day, yes, there is a flow-through.
However, we must also remember, in the last two tariff repairs, we have seen market consolidation and so on and so forth. So there will be those things, and some of those consolidations come back. There is continuity impact. So I don't think the answer is so simple that if you take a 10% tariff repair, 10% of your revenue minus license fee will flow to EBITDA. Part of it will go to negate the cost creep, part of it would also be impacted through customer base adjustment and continuity and so on and so forth. But yes, if you were to ask me, ceteris paribus, on the day, if a customer recharges at a higher tariff, does that flow?
Yes, it flows because, there is nothing else, in terms of cost that has gone up on that day, except for variable cost, which is essentially a bit of selling and distribution and license fees. On your second question, yes, it is, it is a pretty robust balance sheet, and I'm sure that the board will look at it and evaluate as to what is the best way to deploy. Remember, we have just started the journey on homes and, both these two places, I think there is a huge play for FWA. Both are difficult terrains. Fiberization is a challenge. 5G handset penetration is increasing, and my 5G coverage will also keep increasing. So FWA becomes a very viable solution, and hence, you may see, driven primarily by the homes, FWA-led Wi-Fi penetration in these two circles asking for bigger CapEx.
But your point is absolutely valid, and I'm sure the board will look at it in the light of what can be done with the solid balance sheet that is there. Thank you.
Thank you, Soumen. Just one follow-up. The absolute CapEx has been falling since FY 2024, and now when I look at the reinvestment in homes and 5G coverage expansion, what is the guidance or direction that you believe CapEx should take for FY 2027? If you have formulated your plans, it would be great for us to understand the details of that.
So, Vivekanand, of course, I cannot share with you what is my CapEx guidance because, as a rule, we don't give guidance. But let me put it in this way: this is the company which has a very strong balance sheet and will not shy away from putting investment where growth is required. So if I were to answer you, if we find, let's say, a new urban periphery coming up in one of the cities, in any of these, we will immediately put up sites over there. If it is reasonably decently penetrated with 5G phones, we'll put 5G radio. Home penetration, as I said, we have got very good results. I think sequentially, 10% growth. The base is small, I admit, but sequential quarter on quarter, 10% growth, our ambition will be to grow.
So I would flip the answer in a way that since the balance sheet is strong, it allows the company to drive growth even faster, as opposed to a constrained balance sheet. So, and as far as guidance is concerned, I'm sorry, we are gonna, we don't share any guidance as such.
All right, Soumen, thank you, and all the very best.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Mr. Sanjesh Jain. Mr. Jain, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Yeah. Hi, Soumen, good afternoon. This is Sanjesh from ICICI Securities. First question on the revenue growth. If I look at our mobile revenue growth versus Bharti Airtel's mobile revenue growth, we have underperformed. Now, this is the second quarter of underperformance. I thought second half is stronger for Hexacom, because of tourism in the Rajasthan circle. While the underperformance on the sequential revenue growth very much stays, any particular reason you are saying you are growing slower than Airtel, or why Airtel is growing faster than us? Which is, in a way, it's perplexing. I thought this is underpenetrated circle. We have a lot more to catch up on 5G, 4G versus Bharti Airtel, but clearly the underperformance is something, which, if you can help us in reconciling, that will be very, very helpful.
Thanks, Sanjesh. You would recollect that, in the last quarter, we had called out that there were some issues, because of which we had some customer drop. While we are very closely with the other partners to see that it gets resolved, it has not yet got resolved completely. Hence, there is a bit of, drag, which we still have on that. Now, your interpretation is absolutely right that, during winters, certainly Rajasthan, I do not know so much about Northeast, but certainly Rajasthan is a destination where there are a lot of national in roamers, and that thereby it generates revenue. I haven't checked with, other, let's say, somebody like a travel portal or anybody, but, I think... Let me put it this way, Sanjesh.
We are focused on how do we do the people who are in the state, in these two circles, how do we improve their ARPU and their penetration? And over there, we have a challenge. As I mentioned, last quarter, the challenge started. The challenge is not yet solved and, but there is absolute alignment between the two partners to solve it. In roamers is something which is beyond our control. It is based on whether people want to go to deserts or to mountains. But, I can tell you, underlying growth, give or take, you know, 20-50 basis points here or there, BHL is trending with the national average, and, you will see results coming in. One quarter aberration, and primarily because of this interference, is what is coloring the picture.
No, that's, that's clear, Soumen. Just one question on the FWA. What is an opportunity size? Gopal mentioned 100 million for Pan India, but if I want to narrow it down to us, what is an opportunity size we are looking in FWA for Hexacom circles?
Well, Sanjesh, you know, certain data sets, basis which we size out the market, which is a statistical model, data is not available on a state cut level. So I can hazard a guess, but I would say, if you look at India, the number of households is about, give or take, anywhere between 250 million -300 million. We are talking of in 5 years, India going to 100 million. So assuming it is 250 million households, that's a 40% penetration. Whatever households is there in, you know, in these two states, we can assume that the penetration will of course be lower because, this is a national average. These two states have a challenge, which is why directionally their mobile ARPU is also lower, would be a shade below that.
As you know, you know, we are, there is a lot of combined strategy which is used, and which is helping this company a great deal, because otherwise running two circles, we could not run the FWA. So, strategies are allowing, this is national, but, I would hazard a guess, anywhere between 30%-35% penetration of households, should be something which we can easily aspire to.
No, that's clear. One last bit from myself. On the CapEx and the new business, apart from FWA and mobility, are there any plan for Hexacom, or it will be all done through the Airtel side?
See, we of course have a small and medium business which happens through Hexacom, but as you know, in these two states, we don't have large enterprises. And as was mentioned in the previous call, bulk of the market is restricted to the top 500 companies, and none of them have their head office in either of these two states. So B2B clearly is not an option there. The other option is data center, which is an independent company. Nxtra does it, and Nxtra will do it anywhere in India. And again digital TV, of course, as we mentioned, IPTV has been launched, and you will see strong growth in that because we are evidencing very strong affinity for a current converged home strategy. Our interface is best in class, so adoption rates are very, very strong.
I'm not in a position to share them because, you know, within the quarter and all of that, but adoption rates are very strong, and we expect that digital TV will also be something which will work well in these two places.
No, that's great. Thanks, Soumen, for all those answers, and best of luck for the coming quarters.
Thank you, Sanjesh.
The next question comes from Mr. Gaurav Malhotra. Mr. Malhotra, you may please unmute your side, introduce yourself, and ask your question now.
Yeah, hi, this is Gaurav from Axis Capital. Soumen, just couple of questions. You know, if I see the bump up in home CapEx for Hexacom versus Airtel, right? Obviously, there's a big increase for both, but Hexacom is especially quite high. I think it's more than 100%. Or this, the first nine months is, like, I think 100% of your last of FY 2027, while for Airtel, I think it was, like, some 56%-60% or some such number. It's both are large, but this is larger. So given that, you know, here it's more FWA, while in Airtel they would also be fiber CapEx, I just wanted to get some sense as to why there is a larger spike in home CapEx in Hexacom versus Airtel.
So, you see, any spike is a function of the base, and the very thing that you said, and I explained, that fiber density in these two circles is lower, which is why our homes business was also lower. If you look at pre-FWA, and you look at share of homes business on total top line, or homes as a percentage of mobile in Airtel versus Hexacom, Hexacom was minuscule. Hexacom was... I don't remember, but it was 1% or 2%. Whereas for Airtel, it was a good 4%, 5% or 4%. So the point that I'm trying to come to it, to you, is that the base was very low, and FWA has done the expansion much more. And hence, because of the small base, you see a increase, which is disproportionate in percentage terms compared to what you see in Airtel.
There is no other reason than that. I mean, it's a direct function of how many customers we acquire and how much stock we carry. Then that's the CapEx, so there is nothing more to that.
Just to follow up on what you mentioned, you're giving some numbers on Airtel and Hexacom from a potential FWA penetration or broadband penetration. You're saying 250 million and 100 million, so around 40%. So 250 million is the addressable homes, is that, is that-
No, no. India has 1,400 million people, and roughly, if you take 4-5, that number is anywhere between-
Uh
... 250 million homes to 300 million homes.
Got it.
That's the number of homes which is there in India. Also, you can also evaluate, and this is just... this has nothing to do with Hexacom. You can also look at number of TV homes between cable, satellite, and FTA. You will come to a number which will be closer to about 200 million. So give or take, you know, that is how the industry and the country is divided. So I, because as I explained, we do not get enough data sets by geographical cuts to do some of our hypothesis, but the data sets are very robust at a country level, so our ability to forecast what could be the size of the market at a country level is much easier. But we can use the same parameter with a discount factor on affordability, disposable income, and come to a number.
Just last question. You know, in the Airtel call, Shashwat had mentioned about, you know, the fiber, 5G FWA and UBR. And obviously, we understand the issues or challenges with UBR, but would Hexacom be more open to using UBR, given the likelihood of interference in these two circles will be less, say, than average pan-India level?
So I will give you two answers, Gaurav. Answer one: as an organization, we want to give home Wi-Fi. Now, there are multiple technologies by which you can give home Wi-Fi. According to us, the gold standard is if you give a fiber, because that gives you the most consistent delivery and lowest latency. There are two others. The next best is FWA, and the least best is UBR because of interference, as you mentioned. We will try everything to deliver and increase our addressable market, so this will be no different. We have to just work out as to where is the demand coming from, and is that wherever the demand is coming from, is that a well-to-do area with a good 5G penetration, as in handset penetration? If it is there, then we don't need to think about UBR. We can put FWA and serve the customer.
So this is a unique set where we don't want to put a FWA radio because the affordability is not there and 5G handset is not there. But there are a lot of people who want home Wi-Fi. So there again, UBR will go. But our sequence of preference is that.
So, is this some sort of a nuance change versus what was the thought process till some time back wherein UBR was, like, maybe you were, like, more negative... Not negative, maybe you were less enthused on UBR, say, till few quarters back than what you are today. Would that be-
No, no, no.
the right way of thinking about it?
No, no, no, Gaurav, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, technology cannot drive product. Consumer demand should drive product, and thereby technology. Now, if let's assume 95%-97% of my demand is coming from places where I can service through fiber and FWA, I don't need UBR. That's why I told you, this is a place where there is not enough 5G handset penetration, but people are asking, people are ready to pay INR 400-INR 500 per month, plus taxes, to get a broadband connection, a home Wi-Fi connection. If that happens, we'll deploy. There is no debate around that. So there is no rethinking. That's why I'm saying technology is not good or technology is not bad. The question is, there's a customer demand, and for that customer demand, I need a product. Now, whatever technology allows me to offer that product, I will do.
The reason why we are still evaluating is we don't want to offer a product where the customer says, "I have a need, but I have a very bad experience." We don't want to end up in that scenario, which is why we want a product which meets the customer need and consistently gives more than acceptable customer experience.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Thank you, everyone. Now, I'd like to pass over to Soumen to give his closing remarks for Bharti Hexacom.
Well, thanks a lot for joining the call. A very interesting questions and very relevant ones. Look forward to speaking to all of you next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, for joining today. The recording of this webinar will be available on the company website. Have a great day ahead, everyone. Bye.