Manufacturers drive Airtel Cloud growth as sovereign infrastructure demand rises

A quarter of Airtel Cloud's first 40 customers come from manufacturing as enterprises look to keep AI and operational data under domestic control.

Bharti Airtel's cloud business is seeing growing demand for sovereign infrastructure, with executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal highlighting disaster recovery, backup-as-a-service, storage-as-a-service and video-surveillance-as-a-service among the areas where the company is winning business.

Airtel Cloud has signed up around 40 customers within a year of launch, with manufacturers accounting for about a quarter of its customer base, according to sources familiar with the developments.

During Airtel's Q1 FY27 earnings call, Vittal had said the company added 11 customers during the quarter, taking the total customer count to 33 at the time.

The customer mix highlights a shift in how manufacturers are approaching cloud adoption. Beyond traditional IT modernisation, enterprises are looking for infrastructure that can support connected operations, industrial automation and AI workloads while keeping critical data within India.

Airtel's digital subsidiary Xtelify launched Airtel Cloud in August 2025 as a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform built for Indian enterprises. Manufacturers such as VE Commercial Vehicles are among the companies using the platform.

The latest customer tally also points to sovereign cloud emerging as a growing requirement outside government and public-sector use cases, particularly among enterprises handling sensitive operational and intellectual-property data.

Manufacturing creates new cloud requirements

Manufacturing is becoming a significant cloud market as companies deploy connected machines, industrial sensors, automated production systems and AI-powered analytics across their operations.

These environments generate large volumes of operational and production data that need to be stored, processed and analysed in near real time.

For manufacturers, cloud infrastructure is being used to connect legacy systems, production applications, warehouses and supply-chain platforms while providing the computing capacity required for analytics, automation and AI initiatives.

As industrial operations become more digitised, companies are also placing greater emphasis on where data is stored and who controls access to it.

The issue is becoming relevant as manufacturers seek to protect operational information, production processes and intellectual property while meeting governance and compliance requirements.

This is creating opportunities for sovereign cloud providers that can offer local hosting, data residency and greater visibility into how critical workloads are managed.

Airtel bets on sovereign cloud

Airtel Cloud was originally developed to support Airtel's own digital operations. According to the company, the platform has been built to handle up to 1.4 billion transactions per minute and combines cloud infrastructure, connectivity and GenAI-based provisioning capabilities.

The platform is designed to support mission-critical and regulated workloads while helping enterprises avoid dependence on a single cloud vendor.

During Airtel's Q1 FY27 earnings call, Vittal said the company added 11 customers during the quarter, taking the total customer count to 33 at the time.

"We continue to see a strong momentum here with almost all critical services now live on our platform," Vittal had said. The latest customer numbers indicate continued growth since then.

Disaster recovery and backup services gain traction

While sovereign cloud remains a key focus area, Airtel is also seeing demand for cloud services that enterprises can deploy relatively quickly.

According to Vittal, the company is winning business around disaster recovery, backup-as-a-service, storage-as-a-service and video-surveillance-as-a-service offerings.

These services are becoming important for manufacturers, where technology outages can disrupt production schedules, inventory movement, supplier coordination and customer commitments.

Airtel Cloud offers backup, data replication and disaster-recovery capabilities. The platform is also integrated with Airtel's network infrastructure, enabling secure connections between factories, offices, cloud environments and recovery sites.

For enterprises operating across multiple production locations, this provides a way to improve resilience while simplifying infrastructure management.

According to Vittal, larger cloud opportunities are beginning to emerge around sovereign cloud requirements involving sensitive workloads.

These opportunities are particularly visible in regulated industries and public-sector organisations where data residency, governance and compliance requirements are becoming important.

For manufacturers, similar considerations are beginning to apply as AI adoption increases and more operational systems move onto cloud platforms.