As a result, the move aims to protect critical sectors like telecoms, banking and energy and help strengthen national cyber defences.

Designed “In India, For India,”, according to the company, the region has been a hub for Zscaler’s technology and cyber research, and the new centre will serve as a national platform for collaboration between government, private sector and academia.

Additionally, the centre will focus on four key areas: protect, remediate, facilitate and build, delivering real-time intelligence, partnering with government agencies, promoting AI-driven defences and strengthening India’s cybersecurity talent pipeline, respectively, the company revealed.

Bharti Airtel, executive vice-chairman, Gopal Vittal, said: “At Airtel, our commitment has been to safeguard our customers and the nation’s digital fabric. This partnership with Zscaler marks a significant extension of this commitment that will combine the power of our AI capabilities and deep scale for cybersecurity research to protect the country’s expanding digital ecosystem.

“We will focus on addressing challenges unique to our market to build a safer, more resilient digital India where every citizen and enterprise can connect and thrive with confidence. Our research-backed preventive mechanism will also encourage peaceful and secure engagements on digital platforms.”

Zscaler, CEO and chairman, Jay Chaudhry, added: “India is building digital systems at an unmatched population scale. You cannot secure this level of ambition with legacy firewalls and VPNs that were never designed for a hyper-connected world. It demands a modern Zero Trust architecture that is secure-by-design.

“With the AI & cyber threat research centre – India, we will bring the full power of the world’s largest security cloud to protect the nation’s public and private sectors. By combining actionable intelligence from over 500 billion daily transactions with local expertise, we aren’t just building readiness; we are empowering a new generation of defenders to stay ahead of the adversary.”

Separately, Bharti Airtel also announced plans to invest to grow its Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC), Airtel Money Limited, with ₹20,000 crore over the next few years.

Vittal added: “The success of our LSP platform over the past two years is proof of our ability to combine technology, data, and customer trust to deliver impact at a national scale. We have built one of India’s most trusted and scalable digital credit engines- reaching millions with high‑quality credit supported by industry‑best performance metrics.

“Our NBFC expansion strengthens this foundation and reflects our ambition to build a differentiated, future‑ready digital lending business – one that stands for trust, innovation, and financial inclusion.”

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