Bharti Airtel's Xtelify Launches AI-Powered Cloud and Software Platform for Global Telecom Industry

India's Bharti Airtel launches cloud, AI services for businesses, telcos

Aug 4 (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel's (BRTI.NS), opens new tab digital unit Xtelify on Monday announced a new cloud platform and AI-powered software offerings for businesses and telecom operators, alongside partnerships with Singtel, Globe Telecom and Airtel Africa. Airtel Cloud offers a range of services including, infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service with secure migration and scaling, the company said in a statement. The new AI-powered software platform for telcom operators features a data engine, workforce tools and customer engagement modules to improve service and lift average revenue per user (ARPU) - a key metric for the sector, India's No. 2 telecom operator added. As part of the plan, Airtel has partnered with Singtel (STEL.SI), opens new tab, Globe Telecom (GLO.PS), opens new tab and Airtel Africa (AAF.L), opens new tab to deploy the platform, enabling applications such as AI-driven workforce optimisation, omni-channel customer service and real-time customer engagement. India has been stepping up efforts to pilot local cloud data storage. The country's cloud services market was estimated at $8.3 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $24.2 billion by 2028, according to a 2024, opens new tab report by International Data Corporation. The market is so far largely dominated by foreign firms. Last month, Airtel announced a partnership with AI-powered search engine Perplexity, offering a 12-month free subscription to its 360 million customers. ($1 = 87.5700 Indian rupees) Reporting by Aleef Jahan, Manvi Pant, Kashish Tandon and Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Sonia Cheema Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Airtel Expands Its Cloud Platform to Other Telecom Businesses

It is built in India and is managed by 300 certified cloud experts Airtel's fully owned subsidiary, Xtelify, launched a telco-grade cloud platform for telecom businesses on Monday. Dubbed Airtel Cloud, the cloud platform was initially designed to serve the telecom operator's internal operational requirements and houses all its digital assets and capabilities. It is said to handle 140 crore transactions per minute. Airtel is now expanding the platform to third-party telecom service providers as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model. Alongside, the company also launched a complementary artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software platform. In a press release, the Indian telecom operator announced the expansion of Airtel Cloud to third-party businesses in the telecom sector. Airtel said it is a sovereign platform, meaning it was built within India from the ground up, and it is designed to handle a massive 140 crore transactions per minute. The company claims that the platform is hosted on "sustainable" data centres, indicating that these facilities are capable of reusing water (for cooling the servers) and other resources. Airtel claims that its cloud platform supports advanced data and AI workloads, featuring built-in support for AI/ML operations. Additionally, the company also claims that its IaaS and PaaS services are "highly secure and reliable." It is also said to offer up to 40 percent optimisation in cloud spending for Indian businesses. Other features of the Airtel Cloud include scaling capabilities, lower costs (the company did not disclose compared to which service), and no vendor lock-ins. Alongside the cloud platform, Xtelify also launched an AI-powered software that acts as a complementary layer built on top of Airtel Cloud. It can be understood as a modular telecom-focused Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering with AI and automation at its core. The software offers a converged data engine that can aggregate data across a telecom company's systems and generate insights such as churn prediction, network optimisation, and average revenue per user (ARPU) prediction. The Xtelify software combines a workforce platform, which likely serves as a task management tool, and an experience platform, which could focus on customer lifecycle management, into a unified software. Airtel highlighted that Xtelify has signed three global partnerships for the newly launched platform. These global partners include Singapore-based Singtel, Philippines-based Globe Telecom, and Airtel Africa, which is wholly owned and operated by Bharti Airtel.

Bharti Airtel Unveils Telco-Grade Cloud and AI Stack via Xtelify to Power Digital India

Promises up to 40% cost savings for Indian businesses with no vendor lock-ins. In a move that underscores its transformation from a telecom operator to a digital technology powerhouse, Bharti Airtel has unveiled a sweeping vision to drive digital transformation for enterprises and telcos worldwide through its newly branded digital subsidiary, Xtelify. At the centre of this strategy lies the launch of Airtel Cloud, a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform designed and built entirely in India. Backed by an AI-powered software stack, this new initiative positions Airtel to challenge hyperscale cloud providers and global telecom software vendors -- all while aligning with India's growing push for digital sovereignty. Tailored to handle 140 crore transactions per minute, the same scale at which Airtel currently operates internally, the Airtel Cloud is hosted on next-generation sustainable data centres and promises up to 40% cost optimisation for Indian businesses. What sets it apart is its compliance-first design: all data remains within Indian borders, with no access to any foreign entity. This is a pivotal moment in our journey. We are taking our homegrown platforms -- built, tested and scaled within Airtel -- to businesses across India and telcos across the globe said Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and MD, Bharti Airtel. In essence, Airtel is commercialising the same digital backbone it used to scale to over 590 million customer touchpoints. The AI Stack: Xtelify's True Differentiator while cloud infrastructure is the foundation, the real edge lies in Xtelify's software platform, which offers four flagship products designed to reshape telecom operations: Xtelify Work: AI-driven field task automation and resource optimisation Xtelify Serve: Intelligent, omni-channel customer experience management Xtelify Data Engine: Converged analytics for hyper-personalised insights Xtelify IQ: Real-time, secure customer engagement platform These platforms promise to solve real-world telecom problems: from streamlining massive field operations to reducing churn and boosting ARPU through better customer engagement. Airtel isn't testing the waters it's diving straight in with three marquee global clients already on board: Singtel (Singapore): Will deploy Xtelify Work to transform field operations with AI-powered dispatch, governance, and real-time tracking. Globe Telecom (Philippines): Adopting Xtelify Serve to bring seamless, intelligent service delivery to millions of users. Airtel Africa: Rolling out Xtelify Work, Data Engine, and IQ across 14 countries, empowering 150,000 field agents and unlocking fraud/spam protection use cases at scale. With Xtelify, Airtel is clearly signalling a shift. It's no longer content being a pure-play telecom player. Instead, it's building a hybrid identity as a provider of digital infrastructure, AI-powered software, and managed services for the global telecom and enterprise ecosystem. Also Read: Airtel Business to Bring India’s Sovereign Telco-Grade Cloud to Market in June 2025 It's a strategy that mirrors the playbooks of companies like Reliance Jio with Jio Platforms or even Amazon with AWS. But Airtel's key differentiator? Decades of experience operating at extreme telecom scale -- and now productising that experience for others. For India Inc the availability of a homegrown sovereign cloud with enterprise-grade capabilities comes at a crucial time amid rising concerns over data localisation, regulatory compliance, and cost efficiency. For global telcos, Airtel's AI stack offers an out-of-the-box transformation solution backed by the credibility of a large operator. Bharti Airtel's Xtelify is more than just a digital play it's a strategic pivot. By combining sovereign infrastructure with real-world-tested AI tools, Airtel is quietly but firmly inserting itself into the high-stakes global conversation around cloud, telecom software, and enterprise digitisation. The ambition is clear: build in India, scale globally.

Airtel's Xtelify Launches Sovereign Cloud and AI-Powered Global Telecom Software Platform

Xtelify platforms aim to reduce churn, increase ARPU, and streamline operations with AI. Xtelify, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, today announced the launch of 'Airtel Cloud', a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform. Initially developed to support Airtel's digital operations in India to manage up to 140 crore transactions per minute, the platform is now being extended to serve enterprises across the country. Xtelify houses all of Airtel's digital assets and capabilities. Its key offerings include Airtel Cloud and a suite of AI-powered software solutions: Xtelify Work, Xtelify Data Engine, Xtelify Serve, and Xtelify IQ. Also Read: Airtel Business to Bring India's Sovereign Telco-Grade Cloud to Market in June 2025 Hosted on sustainable data centres and equipped with Gen-AI-based provisioning, Airtel Cloud is managed by a team of 300 certified cloud experts, says Airtel. It offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and advanced connectivity solutions. The platform guarantees secure data migration, scalability, reduced costs, and freedom from vendor lock-in. Emphasising data sovereignty, Airtel has confirmed that all operations and data on the platform will remain fully within Indian jurisdiction, eliminating any possibility of foreign access. In a parallel development, Xtelify also launched an AI-powered software platform designed for telecom operators globally. The platform aims to eliminate operational complexities, enhance customer experience, reduce churn, and boost Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). "Addressing every layer of the telecom value chain, the solution comes with a converged data engine for AI-led insights and intelligence at scale, a Workforce platform for real-time task streamlining and an experience platform for managing every element of the customer journey for a telco," Airtel announced on Monday, August 4, 2025. Xtelify signed three global partnerships for the newly launched platform. In Singapore, it will deploy 'Xtelify Work' with Singtel, offering AI-powered fleet optimisation, task automation, and real-time governance for field teams. In the Philippines, Globe Telecom will adopt 'Xtelify Serve', an AI-powered customer service platform designed to deliver omni-channel service assurance and data-driven business process optimisation. Airtel Africa, meanwhile, will roll out Xtelify's Data Engine, Work, and IQ platforms to support its operations across 14 countries. These tools will empower 150,000 field personnel with market intelligence, enhance spam and fraud protection, and facilitate secure, real-time customer engagement. "Xtelify IQ will enable secure, real-time, omnichannel customer engagement, enhancing both service quality and customer experience," Airtel said. Also Read: Airtel Business to Launch New Comprehensive Cloud Solution Amid Strategic Overhaul Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, described the launch as a pivotal moment. "It is a very pivotal moment in our history as we take our world-class, home-grown platforms of Airtel Cloud and software solutions to businesses in India and telcos all over the world. We are privileged to have signed on partnerships with three top-tier companies already - Singtel, Globe Telecom and Airtel Africa," he said. "Within Airtel, we have been actively harnessing digital innovations at unmatched scale to transform our services and enhance customer experience at Airtel for many years now. This has involved powering over 590 million customer touchpoints and solving some of the most complex telecom challenges in the world. All this is enabled by Airtel Cloud where all our applications run at a very compelling cost. Today, we are also excited to take our telco-grade, sovereign-cloud platform and help businesses in India innovate faster, scale smarter and stay secure in today's rapidly-evolving digital landscape. All controls of our cloud will reside strictly within the country ensuring zero possibility of any entity outside India being able to access any part of this data or its working," Vittal added. Also Read: Airtel Working on India's First AI-Enabled Sovereign Cloud Solution Ng Tian Chong, CEO - Singtel Singapore, said: "We are always looking for ways to better equip our field engineers so we can deliver the best possible experiences to our customers. This platform enables us to reimagine our workflows with AI at the core, improving both efficiency and customer service. By optimising dispatch and resource management, our engineers can reach customers more quickly, resolve issues with greater accuracy and reduce our overall carbon footprint. We're also able to enhance productivity, strengthen governance, and ultimately deliver more value to our customers." Carl Cruz, President and CEO - Globe Telecom, said, "At Globe, our North Star has always been our deep desire to help uplift the lives of Filipinos by creating meaningful, reliable, and human-centered experiences. This partnership with Airtel and Xtelify is a bold step forward in that aspiration, empowering us to serve our customers with greater empathy, intelligence, and speed. By integrating Xtelify's AI-powered Case Management Platform into our operations, we bring to life our commitment to best-in-class service across every journey, from the first touchpoint to final resolution. This transformation enables a more seamless and transparent experience for our customers, where concerns are addressed with clarity, accountability, and genuine care." "We are proud to collaborate with Airtel and Xtelify, two like-minded partners equally committed to raising the bar for customer experience globally. Together, we are not just launching a platform, we are building a new standard for service excellence, one that helps bring our shared vision of a more admired and more customer-centric telco to life," Cruz added. Also Read: Airtel, Google Cloud Partner to Accelerate Cloud Adoption, Deploy Generative AI Solutions "We are excited to have Xtelify as a core technology partner, enabling us to deliver meaningful digital advancements and enriching the lives of millions across Africa," said Jacques Barkhuizen, Group Chief Information Officer - Airtel Africa. TelecomTalk first reported on the AI-enabled sovereign cloud solution of Airtel in January 2025.

Airtel's Digital Arm Xtelify Introduces AI-Driven Software Suite to Revolutionise Global Telcos

Hosted on next-gen sustainable data centres, with Gen-AI based provisioning, and managed by 300 certified cloud experts, the highly secure and reliable Airtel Cloud offers IaaS, PaaS and advanced connectivity and guarantees secure migration, effortless scaling, lower costs and no vendor lock-ins. Xtelify also launched an AI-powered, future-ready software platform that will help telcos all around the world rid themselves of underlying complexity, improve customer experience, lower churn and raise ARPU. Addressing every layer of the telecom value chain, the solution comes with a converged data engine for AI led insights and intelligence at scale, a Workforce platform for real time task streamlining and an experience platform for managing every element of the customer journey for a telco.

Airtel's Xtelify launches sovereign cloud, global AI platform

Xtelify, a fully-owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel housing its digital assets, has announced the launch of two major technology initiatives: a sovereign cloud platform named 'Airtel Cloud' for the Indian market, and an AI-powered software platform designed for global telecommunications companies. 'Airtel Cloud' is a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform initially developed to manage Bharti Airtel's internal operations in India, built to handle a capacity of 140 crore transactions per minute. The company is now extending this platform to external businesses in India. Key features of Airtel Cloud include: Alongside the cloud offering, Xtelify has launched a new AI-powered software platform aimed at telecommunication companies worldwide. The platform is designed to reduce operational complexity, enhance customer experience, lower customer churn, and increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). The solution addresses multiple layers of the telecom value chain and includes three main components: Concurrent with the launch, Xtelify announced it has signed three global partnerships for its new AI platform. Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and MD ̶ Bharti Airtel, said,

Airtel Enters the Cloud Market with Data Sovereignty at its Core

MediaNama's take: Airtel's move to provide a cloud service should not come as a surprise, given that its biggest competitor, Reliance Jio, already offers the same. Besides this, in August last year, the company's managing director, Gopal Vittal, had implied that there is only so much Airtel can do to gain share in the connectivity business. "My own sense is that this is really what calls for greater urgency in our own portfolio to really drive a lot more adjacencies because remember the connectivity side of the business as an industry is growing only at about 4% to 5%, so underlying connectivity will always be soft, and there is only so much that you can do to actually gain share and so on," he had explained during the earnings call for the quarter ending in June 2024. Cloud could be one of the adjacencies that the company is turning towards to deal with the softness in its connectivity business by leveraging the infrastructure and learnings from its telecom business. In a shift from being a telecom service provider, Airtel has launched a cloud solution for telecom businesses, marking its entry into the technology service domain. This cloud service includes business offerings such as a converged data engine for AI-led insights and intelligence at scale, a workforce management platform for real-time task streamlining, and an experience platform for managing the customer journey. These digital solutions are a part of Airtel's 100% subsidiary Xtelify. This launch comes after the company mentioned its plans to launch a 'telco-grade' cloud offering during its earnings call for the quarter ending March 31, 2025 (Q4FY25). During the press conference announcing the launch of the cloud, the company's managing director, Gopal Vittal, explained that the Airtel Cloud will be sovereign, meaning that the data will stay within the country. In the lead-up to the discussion around the cloud, Vittal mentioned that businesses today struggle with having their various segments siloed into different parts. "Your data infrastructure in an environment like this is not AI-ready. So it's typically siloed, and it's unusable. You have a high cost of data and migration. Now, imagine if you've got a business and you want to port the data of a user into another business. You have a huge migration challenge. You've got data discovery issues, data duplication issues, and of course, it's not security compliant, nor DPDPA [Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023] compliant," he said, explaining the challenges facing businesses. He said that both the cost of moving data to the cloud and the issue of data localisation are solved with the Airtel Cloud. The company is already using the 300 cloud expert-managed cloud service internally to process 140 crore transactions per minute. While Vittal emphasised the fact that the cloud keeps the data in India and discussed DPDPA compliance, the act does not mandate localisation. Instead, it restricts companies from sending the data of Indian users to countries that the government may notify later. When asked about the same, Vittal pointed out that irrespective of whether or not there is a hard mandate on localisation, a sovereign cloud is relevant to certain types of business segments/customers. "So many regulated companies, for instance, in our [Airtel's] case, we cannot put a lot of the data that we have outside on the public cloud. It's the same for many banks and insurance companies, and financial services," he explained. Besides meeting any localisation mandates, Vittal said that other aspects of the business, such as the cost of the service and the fact that it comes bundled with Airtel's network and data centres, make it a compelling proposition. Vittal explained that the data engine enables the company to offer the same experience to its customers across various interfaces. Within Airtel, the engine has allowed the company to assess network performance and sales data across market segments. The data engine is the reason behind Airtel's high average revenue per user (ARPU), Vittal said. "The data engine will really allow anyone to do any kind of manipulation or action to drive ARPU or to improve the performance of their business," Vittal added, explaining the utility of the service. The engine has also enabled the company to offer its spam detection service and enter into other business ventures, such as Airtel Financial Services. "The data engine also allows you to do the spam and fraud prevention that we launched recently," he said, implying that other telcos who opt to purchase the cloud service will be able to implement the spam and fraud prevention platform on their networks as well. On the financial services side, Vittal explained that the company leveraged its native intelligence to establish a 'telco grade' credit score for 90 million customers beyond the regular Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited (CBIL score). Given the company's push for AI in this launch, as well as its recent announcement to offer Perplexity to its customers, participants at the conference asked Vittal whether the company intends to create its own large language model (LLM) in the near future. "I don't think we've quite crossed that point. I think the amount of investments that are going on around the world in LLMs is astronomical, and I think we would much rather use the public LLMs that are already there. Combine that with small language models, which are relevant for the kind of business that we run, and make it much sharper. We're already beginning to do things like that," Vittal replied.

Airtel's digital arm -- Xtelify -- launches pioneering digital capabilities to accelerate digital transformations for businesses

Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and MD ̶ Bharti Airtel, said, "It is a very pivotal moment in our history as we take our world class, home grown platforms of Airtel Cloud and software solutions to businesses in India and telcos all over the world. We are privileged to have signed on partnerships with three top tier companies already - Singtel, Globe Telecom and Airtel Africa." "Within Airtel, we have been actively harnessing digital innovations at unmatched scale to transform our services and enhance customer experience at Airtel for many years now. This has involved powering over 590 million customer touchpoints and solving some of the most complex telecom challenges in the world. All this is enabled by where all our applications run at a very compelling cost. Today, we are also excited to take our telco-grade, and help businesses in India innovate faster, scale smarter and stay secure in today's rapidly-evolving digital landscape. All controls of our cloud will reside strictly within the country ensuring zero possibility of any entity outside India being able to access any part of this data or its working", Vittal added. Ng Tian Chong, CEO - Singtel Singapore said: "We are always looking for ways to better equip our field engineers so we can deliver the best possible experiences to our customers. This platform enables us to reimagine our workflows with AI at the core, improving both efficiency and customer service. By optimising dispatch and resource management, our engineers can reach customers more quickly, resolve issues with greater accuracy and reduce our overall carbon footprint. We're also able to enhance productivity, strengthen governance, and ultimately deliver more value to our customers." Carl Cruz, President and CEO - Globe Telecom said, "At Globe, our North Star has always been our deep desire to help uplift the lives of Filipinos by creating meaningful, reliable, and human-centered experiences. This partnership with Airtel and Xtelify is a bold step forward in that aspiration, empowering us to serve our customers with greater empathy, intelligence, and speed. By integrating Xtelify's AI-powered Case Management Platform into our operations, we bring to life our commitment to best-in-class service across every journey, from the first touchpoint to final resolution. This transformation enables a more seamless and transparent experience for our customers, where concerns are addressed with clarity, accountability, and genuine care." "We are proud to collaborate with Airtel and Xtelify, two like-minded partners equally committed to raising the bar for customer experience globally. Together, we are not just launching a platform, we are building a new standard for service excellence, one that helps bring our shared vision of a more admired and more customer-centric telco to life", Cruz added. "We are excited to have Xtelify as a core technology partner, enabling us to deliver meaningful digital advancements and enriching the lives of millions across Africa," said Jacques Barkhuizen, Group Chief Information Officer - Airtel Africa.