The founder of Bharti Airtel, a telecom-to-media conglomerate, said on Monday the company wanted to improve its access to growth capital and reduce its debt leverage a day after it announced its plans to raise up to Rs. 210 billion ($2.87 billion) via a sale of shares to existing shareholders.

Bharti Founder-Chairman Sunil Mittal said the company had been burdened with extraordinary debt and he felt confident that now was the time to invest and grow.

The telecom operator is raising money at a time when it is preparing for the launch of 5G services, which it hopes will be a reality by the second half of the next year, Reuters reported from Mumbai.

With more than 352 million subscribers, Airtel, which is India’s second biggest carrier, said it will not shy away from raising prices further but will move towards it gradually.

In the last few years India’s telecom market has seen an intense price war after Mukesh Ambani-controlled Jio Infocomm entered the market in late 2016 and launched free voice calls and cut data prices that brought about disruption in the market.

Mittal also expects mobile average revenue per user (ARPU), a key metric for telecoms companies, to inch up to Rs. 200 (approx. $ 2.7) by the end of this financial year, March 31, 2022.

Airtel’s quarterly ARPU was Rs. 146 for the quarter ended June 2021.

Buoyed by Mittal’s speech Bharti’s shares ended 4.3 percent higher after the investor call with the shares posting their biggest daily gain in over a month.

Mittal also urged the government to step up investments in digital infrastructure as he expected the levies and burdens on telecom companies to come down.

“We have been also urging the government to attend to some pressing issues inhibiting continued investments in the sector given the negative to low returns,” Mittal added.

As Indianbroadcastingworld.com  has reported earlier, Bharti Airtel is also eyeing the broadband infrastructure area by participating in the public-private projects like the BharatNet for which the government organization BBNL has floated tenders.

BharatNet aims to bring broadband to all the habitable villages of India where the Indian government plans to underwrite a certain percentage of the investments.

Meanwhile, Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises is also one of the investors in OneWeb, a global communications company building a capability to deliver broadband satellite internet services worldwide, which has got necessary permissions for services in India. Others in the broadband-via-satellite game in India include SpaceX’s Starlink, Tata-Telesat combine and even Hughes Communications.