Reliance Jio vs Bharti Airtel — four charts that showcase how the Indian telecom giants faired in 2022

Overall, Reliance Jio Platforms and Bharti Airtel earned ₹2.12 lakh crore (over $27 billion, at current conversion rate). Notably, the revenue was not only earned through telecom operations but also other sources, both operational and non-operations.

The data depicted includes earnings coming from Airtel’s Digital TV Services, home services and much more. It also includes everything under the Reliance Jio Platforms, an umbrella entity for all digital businesses of Reliance including JioSaavn, JioMeet, JioTV, MyJio and more.

As the data showcased above suggests, Bharti Airtel has an edge over Reliance Jio Platforms that was spun off into a separate entity in 2019.

Reliance Jio Platforms definitely took the lead with a profit of a whopping ₹15,487 crore or $1.9 billion for FY21. The Mukesh Ambani-led company also reported a profit of ₹12,534 crore ($1.6 billion) last year.

Bharti Airtel is present in 16 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company has a customer base of 491 million users across these 16 countries, out of which 360 million are from India. If data of all the 16 countries is to be considered then Airtel has had more customers than Reliance Jio.

Jio telecom service currently only has a presence in India, anda it has been losing its subscriber base since June 2021. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio has the highest market share among the wireless service providers at 35%, while Airtel has a 31.56% market share.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) has been higher for Bharti Airtel for quite some time. Even in the January to March quarter, Airtel was earning ₹10.4 rupees more than Reliance Jio per user.

This also may be because Jio’s tariffs are still cheapest among the three biggest players in the domain — Airtel and VI. The June ending quarter for 2022 may however present a different picture, since analysts at JP Morgan expect the benefits from Jio’s 20-25% traffic hike to flow by then.