Bharti Airtel surpassed HDFC Bank on Monday to become India’s second-largest company by market capitalisation, as its shares climbed 1.68 per cent to trade at ₹1,937.40 on the NSE near closing bell. Airtel’s total market cap stood at ₹11,80,328 crore, narrowly edging past HDFC Bank’s ₹11,82,223 crore — a gap that fluctuated through the session after Airtel hit an intraday high of ₹1,953.80. Reliance Industries remains the country’s most valuable firm at ₹18.04 lakh crore.
Airtel stock has gained over 10 per cent in the past week and outperformed the broader market significantly, with one-year returns of 6.8 per cent against the Nifty 50’s negative 5.54 per cent. HDFC Bank, by contrast, has shed 22.53 per cent year-to-date and 20.63 per cent over the past year, weighed down by the abrupt resignation of its part-time chairman Atanu Chakraborty. The bank’s management has maintained there are no governance concerns.
Airtel’s rise comes on the back of solid Q4 FY26 results. Revenue from operations grew 15.6 per cent year-on-year to ₹55,383 crore, while India mobile revenue rose 8.3 per cent, supported by higher Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), which improved to ₹257 from ₹245 a year ago. Net profit fell 33.5 per cent to ₹7,325 crore, largely due to a high base from one-time gains in the year-ago quarter.
Looking ahead, Airtel plans to deploy 56 edge data centres over the next 18–24 months and has committed ₹20,000 crore to non-banking financial services. Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal also expressed an aspiration to raise Bharti Telecom’s stake back to 51 per cent over the next decade, from its current 40 per cent-plus holding.
Published on May 18, 2026