Airtel launches sovereign cloud, AI software suit; signs pacts with global telcos

Gopal Vittal, vice chairman and managing director, Bharti Airtel at the launch event

Bharti Airtel has fired its first salvo in India’s cloud wars with the launch of a sovereign cloud offering, staking its claim in a market dominated by US tech giants Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google.

Xtelify, the digital arm of Bharti Airtel, has launched a new sovereign cloud platform and an AI-driven software suite for telecom operators, marking a significant leap in its strategy to accelerate digital transformation for enterprises in India and across the globe.

The newly launched Airtel Cloud, built entirely in India, is designed with telco-grade reliability and tailored to manage up to 140 crore transactions per minute, currently supporting Airtel’s own operations in India.

The platform, now being extended to Indian businesses, is hosted on next-generation, sustainable data centres and features GenAI-based provisioning. Managed by a team of over 300 certified cloud experts, the platform offers infrastructure and platform services with advanced connectivity, and promises seamless migration, high security, flexible scaling, and up to 40% savings in cloud expenses, without vendor lock-ins.

In a parallel launch, Xtelify introduced a comprehensive software platform aimed at modernising telecom operations globally. The AI-powered suite addresses every layer of the telecom value chain, combining a converged data engine for real-time intelligence, a workforce platform for field operations, and a customer experience platform designed to reduce churn and increase average revenue per user (ARPU).

The solution is positioned as a future-ready digital foundation for telecom operators navigating increasing complexity and demand for personalised services.

As part of its global expansion, Xtelify has signed strategic partnerships with three major telecom companies, Singtel in Singapore, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, and Airtel Africa.

In Singapore, Xtelify will deploy its enterprise-grade platform ‘Xtelify Work’ for Singtel’s field teams, enabling AI-powered fleet optimisation, automated task workflows, and real-time tracking.

In the Philippines, Globe Telecom will adopt ‘Xtelify Serve’, a next-gen customer experience platform designed to enable omnichannel service, intelligent operations, and data-driven process optimisation. In Africa, Airtel will roll out Xtelify’s Data Engine, Work, and IQ platforms across 14 countries, powering use cases such as fraud prevention, hyper-local market insights, and real-time, secure customer engagement for a 150,000-strong workforce.

“The network combined with the cloud has a very strong value proposition because that's what enables us to reduce the total cost of ownership,” said Gopal Vittal, vice-chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel, at a press conference in New Delhi.

“If you were to take the network separately and the cloud separately, your cost of ownership jumps up… the reason we are able to save 30 to 40% of cost for people moving their workloads to us is simply because of the capacity to bundle these two disparate things and bring it together, which is in any case mission critical for any cloud application.”

As India sharpens its focus on data sovereignty and tighter regulations for sensitive information, Airtel sees an opening to lure clients from sectors like banking, insurance, and government that face strict localization norms and often avoid public clouds.

Vittal said the cloud ecosystem today lacks sovereignty and regulatory oversight. “So a lot of the data doesn't sit in India. The second is that the cost of moving to the cloud is high, and so we've solved these problems by launching a telco-grade cloud.”

While rivals like Google, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), E2E Networks, and the Hiranandani-backed Yotta Infrastructure are also chasing the cloud opportunity in India, Airtel is banking on its core telecom backbone to offer a more integrated and cost-effective alternative.

“This is not a one-quarter or two-quarter situation. This is a long gate, but it's really the start point of Airtel demonstrating its capabilities to be in a very, very different space,” Vittal said.