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Indian Continent Investment Limited (ICIL), a promoter entity linked to Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, has sold a portion of its shareholding in the telecom operator. ICIL divested a 0.56% stake, equivalent to around 3.43 crore shares, for approximately Rs 7,190 crore (USD 806 million). Following the sale, Airtel’s share price closed at Rs 2,127 on Wednesday, reflecting a decline of 1.60%.
the end of the second quarter of FY26 (September 2025), ICIL held around 1.48% of AiThe shares were sold at about Rs 2,096 each, representing a discount of roughly 3% to the prevailing market price. Atrtel. This transaction is expected to reduce its ownership to about 0.92%. This sale comes shortly after another promoter, Singtel, disclosed that it had sold around 0.8% of its stake in Airtel for Rs 10,353 crore (SGD 1.5 billion).
This is not the first time ICIL has trimmed its holding this year. Earlier, it divested roughly 1% of its stake for about Rs 11,227 crore, followed by another sale in February 2025 valued at approximately Rs 8,485 crore.
Bharti Airtel remains India’s second-largest telecom operator and is among a small group of Indian companies with a market capitalisation exceeding USD 100 billion. The wider Bharti Group continues to expand digital infrastructure across the country, including investments in data centres through Nxtra and the use of renewable energy to support these facilities. Airtel operates India’s second-largest 5G network and plans a phased rollout of 5G Standalone (SA) across all telecom circles within the next four to five years.
Earlier this month, the company reported its financial results for the second quarter of FY2025–26 (Q2 FY26). Net profit for the quarter rose to Rs 6,792 crore, compared with Rs 3,911 crore in the same period of the previous year. The increase was largely attributed to strong performance in its mobile services division, supported by higher average revenue per user (ARPU) and continued subscriber growth.