Vodafone Idea will hasten the pace of capital expenditure (capex) deployments, having secured ₹6,400 crore as the first tranche of funding from banks in the quarter ended June 2026.

Chief executive Abhijit Kishore said on Tuesday the company was in discussions with half a dozen public sector banks (PSBs), led by State Bank of India, a few Indian private banks and foreign banks, for raising additional funds via external commercial borrowings (ECBs).

“We have already placed orders worth ₹9,000 crore for capex till now, which also includes the capex undertaken in Q1FY27 of ₹1,930 crore. The supplies and execution basis of these orders have already commenced and will continue. We are now focused on accelerating network expansion with these fresh orders with Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and other partners. They would be executed as we move forward,” Kishore told analysts during an earnings’ call for the quarter ended June.

Kishore added that the company intended to deploy the capex over the next two quarters, with an average of 3,500 4G sites a month.

He also noted that geopolitical challenges created supply-chain constraints that had limited the capex deployment during Q1FY27.

“Our improving trend and recent positive development gives us increasing confidence in our ability to participate in the industry’s growth story,” he added.

Detailing the Aditya Birla group company’s funding plan, Kishore said the first tranche of funding included partial proceeds of ₹1,183 crore from warrants and debt proceeds, besides non-funded based facilities through ECB and Indian private banks.

“The broader financial architecture that supports our capex plan of ₹45,000 crore over the next three years… is built on three cohorts. First is a consortium of PSBs led by SBI with six to seven participating banks. The second cohort is of Indian private banks and the third one is ECB with foreign banks. We remain meaningfully engaged with our lenders across these three cohorts and have made substantial progress with them. I am happy to share that we have successfully raised our first tranche of funding,” Kishore said.

“We are hopeful of closing the discussions with PSBs, led by SBI, as well as continuing work on other debt-raised streams,” he added.

The company’s bank debt has reduced to ₹211 crore as of June 30, from ₹1,926 crore as of June of the previous year, a reduction of ₹1,715 crore.

 The free cash and bank balance as of June 30 stands at ₹6,558 crore.

The funding push and cash balance have bettered VI’s ability to finance 4G and 5G rollouts in the near term, while maintaining its FY29 targets.

Kishore noted that the company will finish 4G rollouts over 18 months across its 17 priority circles. 5G deployment will move into the third year of the capex plan.

On whether Airtel’s Fastlane product offering was emerging as a risk to Vodafone Idea’s postpaid subscriber base, Kishore told analysts that the company had managed to retain postpaid subscribers.

The company recorded its highest net additions since Vodafone India and Idea Cellular merged in 2018.

“We have not seen any dip in the post-paid business. Even the net addition for us in post-paid has been positive consistently over the last six to eight quarters and it’s growing. As far as machine-to-machine (M2M) is concerned, there is an increase in Q1 over the last quarter,” Kishore said.

VI narrowed its losses substantially to ₹3,754 crore in the quarter ended June 2026 (Q1 FY27) as more users migrated and upgraded to higher-value ??4G and 5G services. This led to higher average revenue per user (ARPU), a key metric of profitability.

Revenue from operations grew about 6 per cent annually to ₹11,689 crore from ₹11,023 crore, beating estimates.