New Delhi, Aug. 4: Bharti Airtel - the world's third-largest telecom operator - today posted a 40 per cent rise in net profit for the first quarter ended June on the back of a strong growth in data revenue and a one-time net gain, which offset continued pressure on its voice business, a rise in interest costs and forex losses.

The New Delhi-based operator's net profit rose to Rs 1,554 crore for the April-June quarter from Rs 1,108 crore a year ago.

Consolidated revenues stood at Rs 23,671 crore, up 3.1 per cent from Rs 22,962 crore a year ago. Consolidated mobile data revenues grew 56.9 per cent to Rs 3,459 crore, helped by an 86.5 per cent growth in data traffic.

"The year has begun on a healthy note, with underlying revenue growth accelerating to 12.7 per cent in India. Our customer base has continued to steadily expand. Mobile minutes and data traffic have grown 7.4 per cent and 83.4 per cent respectively," said Gopal Vittal, managing director and CEO, India & South Asia.

"Our capex programme is mostly directed at increasing 3G/4G coverage and improving all-round customer experience," he added.

Sequentially, first-quarter profit surged 23.8 per cent to Rs 1,554.3 crore from Rs 1,255.3 crore in the preceding quarter boosted by a one-time gain of Rs 1,431.4 crore on an African tower asset sale.

Revenues grew 2.8 per cent to Rs 23,670.9 crore against Rs 23,015.5 crore in March quarter.

Adjusted for the impact of the reduction of termination rates, India revenues grew on an underlying basis by 12.7 per cent and mobile revenues by 12.2 per cent year-on-year, the company said.

Mobile data revenues at Rs 2,609 crore grew 67.3 per cent in India, helped by an increase in the data customer base by 25.8 per cent and traffic by 83.4 per cent.

Data ARPU (average revenue per user) moved up Rs 42 to Rs 181, led by a 42.7 per cent increase in data use per customer. Revenues from mobile data contributed 19.2 per cent to mobile revenues from the country vis-à-vis 12.4 per cent in the year-ago period.

Meanwhile, Airtel today appointed Rajiv Mathrani as the chief brand officer for its India operations. He will lead brand positioning, strategic initiatives and associations, and report to Srini Gopalan, director - consumer business.