Airtel vs Jio Platforms: Which telecom company leads on Q2 revenue, profit and ARPU?

Telecom giants Bharti Airtel and Jio Platforms have announced their earnings in the last few days. In the last few years, both companies have aggressively scaled their technologies and have a duopoly in the Indian telecom market.

Last month, Jio Platforms made its stock market debut on NSE and BSE. After blockbuster listing, Jio Platforms market cap rose to over ₹13 lakh crore, making it second largest company after Reliance Industries. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel market cap stood at ₹12.95 crore, making it the third largest company after Jio Platforms.

Bharti Airtel has expanded its network to the African continent (15 countries) and has started offering enterprise connectivity solutions, including data centres, cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

Meanwhile, Jio Platforms, which got listed on the stock exchange recently, is leveraging its infrastructure scale and has become India’s largest telecom service provider with a customer base of over 54 crore users.

Earnings comparison of these two companies shows distinct strengths, with Airtel leading in higher revenue and ARPU, while Jio Platforms leads in subscriber volume and profit margin.

Bharti Airtel vs Jio Platforms Q2FY27 breakdown

As shown in the table above, both companies are growing in revenue and profitability, but their growth drivers and profitability profiles differ. Jio is expanding its customer and broadband base faster, while Airtel is monetising its customers better, as shown by the higher ARPU.

Higher ARPU is a key growth driver

Both telecom companies benefited from higher average revenue per user (ARPU). Airtel’s India mobile ARPU grew by 5.9% YoY to ₹271. This helped mobile revenues grow by 10.1% YoY. Additionally, Airtel added 12 lakh postpaid customers during Q2 FY27 and 29 lakh smartphone data customers.

Jio Platforms' average revenue per user (ARPU) for connectivity services increased to ₹218.8 in Q2FY27 from ₹211.4 in Q2FY26, a rise of 3.5% YoY. During Q2FY27, the total connectivity customer base of Jio increased to 54.24 crore. Jio recorded net additions of 91 lakh users during the quarter.

Airtel’s monthly ARPU of ₹271 is around 24% higher than Jio’s ₹218.8. This indicates Airtel earns more revenue per customer despite having a smaller Indian subscriber base. Airtel’s premiumisation strategy appears to be paying off, with higher-paying postpaid customers and premium mobile plans contributing to growth.

Jio has a larger subscriber base

Jio’s customer base stood at 54.2 crore, compared with Airtel India’s 49.8 crore. This gives Jio an advantage of approximately 4.4 crore customers. Airtel’s 49.8 crore figure represents its India customer base, not its total global base of around 69.3 crore across 15 countries. Jio’s 54.2 crore is its India customer base.

Jio Platforms has a lead in broadband scale and additions. Jio's fixed broadband customer base reached 3 crore, which is twice that of Airtel’s 1.53 crore home customers.

Airtel currently has the stronger monetisation and financial-growth profile, as Africa business supported consolidated revenue growth, while India contributed most of its profit growth.

Meanwhile, Jio has the advantage in subscriber scale, 5G adoption and broadband expansion. The company added new customers and increased its reported EBITDA margin during Q2FY27. Besides this, Jio Platforms used ₹27,500 crore from its IPO proceeds to prepay Reliance Jio Infocomm's borrowings. This could reduce future financing costs and support profits.