Sunil Bharti Mittal will conclude his tenure as Non-Executive Chairman of Airtel Payments Bank and step down from the board with effect from 30 September 2026. Shabnam Sinha will take over as Chairperson for a three-year term beginning 1 October. The bank disclosed the transition in an exchange filing on 17 August 2026.
Sinha’s appointment has already been made by the board and approved by the Reserve Bank of India. It is not pending regulatory clearance.
She currently serves as an Independent Director on the bank’s board, where she chairs the Special Committee of the Board for Monitoring Frauds and sits on the Risk Management and IT committees. The bank says she has more than three decades of leadership and board experience across development finance, financial services, public policy and institutional transformation, including a period at the World Bank advising governments and institutions across Asia, Africa and Europe on governance, risk management and operational effectiveness.
Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, was appointed Non-Executive Chairman in April 2016. Airtel Payments Bank began operations in November 2016, one of eleven entities granted in-principle approval by the RBI to set up a payments bank, with a committed initial investment of ₹3,000 crore. Kotak Mahindra Bank holds a minority stake.
The bank reports more than 121 million monthly active users and nearly 30 million bank account customers through the Airtel Thanks app, with a network of over 500,000 banking points reaching around three in four villages in India. It describes itself as India’s largest payments bank by revenue and the country’s second-largest mobile bank and UPI Autopay player. Those positioning claims come from the bank.
No successor arrangement beyond the chair has been announced, and the bank has not indicated any change to its executive leadership.
This is the second Bharti group chairmanship to change hands this year. In March 2026 Mittal informed the board of Airtel Africa of his intention to retire as chairman following its July annual general meeting, with non-executive director Gopal Vittal succeeding him and Mittal’s son Shravin Bharti Mittal appointed deputy chair.
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