Bharti Airtel has stated that it has become the world's third largest mobile carrier by subscribers. The company claims to have more than 303 million mobile subscribers across 20 countries in South Asia and Africa.

The largest subscriber base is held by China Mobile and followed by UK-based Vodafone Group. Meanwhile China Unicom and Mexican carrier America Movil, are at fourth and fifth position in terms of subscriber base.

Founded in 1995, Airtel presently offers services across the second-, third- and fourth-generation platforms. Its mobile networks carried more than 1.23 trillion minutes of calls and over 333 petabytes of data in the year ended on March 31, 2015. The company pioneered a low-cost business model based on outsourcing, which allowed it to expand services rapidly. According to the company, the next phase of the company's growth would be led by mobile internet.