Shabnam Sinha to chair Airtel Payments Bank as Mittal steps down

Shabnam Sinha will take over as chairperson of Airtel Payments Bank after Sunil Bharti Mittal leaves the board on September 30, 2026, the company said Monday.

Sinha, currently an independent director at the bank, will serve a three-year term starting October 1, subject to Reserve Bank of India approval. She chairs the board's fraud-monitoring committee and sits on the risk management and IT committees.

Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, was appointed non-executive chairman in April 2016. Under his leadership the bank became India's largest payments bank by revenue, the company said. It now serves 121 million monthly active users and nearly 30 million bank account customers through the Airtel Thanks App and a network of more than 500,000 banking points covering three-quarters of India's villages.