en.Wedoany.com Reported - Indian internet service provider Excitel Broadband turned profitable in fiscal year 2026, with plans to increase its subscriber base by 20% and secure new procurement agreements for Wi-Fi 6 equipment with suppliers to deliver premium services.
Varun Pasricha, the newly appointed CEO of Excitel, told ETTelecom in New Delhi that the company has focused on optimizing operations and sustainability over the past two years, exiting markets where scaling was not feasible and deepening its penetration in core cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Kanpur. By reusing assets like routers, divesting non-core cities, and implementing rigorous operations, Excitel turned a loss of INR 740 million in FY2025 into a profit of INR 400 million in FY2026.
As of March 31, 2026, the company's revenue grew 2.5% year-on-year to INR 5.3 billion, while EBITDA (core operating profit) surged 108% year-on-year to INR 730 million. Although the subscriber base remained unchanged at 1 million, Excitel aims to grow it by 20% to 1.2 million by fiscal year 2027-28, with a long-term expansion target of 10 million subscribers driven by IPTV services and urban market potential.
Excitel is India's fourth-largest fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) internet service provider, competing with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and ACT Fibernet. According to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for April 2026, Jio and Airtel together control nearly 56% of the user share in India's wired broadband market. Pasricha stated that Excitel is shifting from a value-first strategy to a premium service-led approach to support its growth ambitions and strengthen its market position. The company is collaborating with OEMs to ensure that the latest CPE (customer premises equipment) technologies, such as Wi-Fi 6 routers or mesh routers, are provided to consumers. He said, "This will be our absolute priority."
Excitel partners with several multinational suppliers, including the Indian subsidiary of Netherlands-based GX Group, Finland's Nokia, and U.S.-based Belden. Going forward, the company will upgrade its procurement focus to include Wi-Fi 6 and mesh routers, primarily from these OEMs. Pasricha noted that during testing, Wi-Fi 6 routers seamlessly delivered 1G speeds in typical home environments. Pasricha succeeded Vivek Raina in February, who left to pursue external opportunities. This change did not result in any alteration to the shareholding structure.
Excitel was co-founded in 2015 by a team of Indian and European entrepreneurs, including Raina, Nikolai Gorchilov, Victor Francess, and Plamen Petkov. The company is a Series C internet broadband firm that has secured funding from European private equity and venture capital firms to support its expansion across India. Pasricha stated that Excitel received several non-binding financing offers before the third quarter of FY2027, but given its current profitability, the company does not require capital to fund near-term growth for at least the next one to two years.
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