Bharti Airtel's promoter entity ICIL has sold 0.56% stake in the telco for about Rs 7,190 crore (USD 806 million). These total to about 3.43 crore equity shares in total. Post the share sale, Airtel's share price closed for Rs 2,127, down by 1.60% on Wednesday. ICIL stands for Indian Continent Investment Limited. It is one of the promoter entities belonging to Airtel Chairman, Sunil Bharti Mittal.
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The shares of the telco were offloaded by ICIL for about Rs 2,096 per share, a discount of 3% from the market price. At the end of Q2 FY26 (September 2025), ICIL owned about 1.48% stake in the telco. This stake sale should lower the holdings of ICIL from 1.48% to 0.92%. What's interesting is that even another promoter, Singtel said that it had sold about 0.8% stake in Bharti Airtel for Rs 10,353 crore (SGD 1.5 billion).
ICIL had also sold more shares earlier this year, reducing its stake by about 1% in Bharti Airtel for Rs 11,227 crore. There was yet another transaction by ICIL in February of 2025 wherein the company sold shares about Rs 8,485.11 crore through a market transaction. Bharti Airtel is the second-largest telecom operator in India, and one of the select five companies to have a market capitalisation of more than $100 billion.
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Bharti group continues to build one of the largest digital infrastructures in the country and is also investing in data centers through Nxtra, along with renewable energy sources to power them. Airtel's 5G network is the second largest in the country, and one of the largest in Asia. Airtel has said that it will continue to build out the telecom infrastructure in a phased manner and gradually also introduce 5G SA (standalone) in all of the telecom circles in the next four to five years.
