Bharti Airtel has increased its stake in Indus Towers to 47.95 percent.

The company has significantly upped its stake, adding 23.01 percent to the 24.94 percent stake it already owned.

These latest shares were acquired from its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nettle Infrastructure.

Indus Towers is one of the companies that local telco Vodafone Idea (Vi) owes dues to, with Indus reportedly owed $846 million by the operator, with the two parties recently agreeing to softer terms on these payments.

Indus operates more than 186,000 telecoms towers across the country, plus 339,400 co-locations. The company recently appointed Prachur Sah as its new MD and CEO, replacing Bimal Diyal who departed in July.

As for Airtel, the operator was the first to launch 5G in India back in October, and hit over one million subscribers within a month of launching its 5G network. Its 5G service is currently live in 67 cities.