Google Will invest up to $1 billion in India’s second largest telecom operator Indian Airtel. Google to pay $700 million (Rs 734 per share) for 1.28 percent stake Bharti Airtel Ltd and the rest towards multi-year plans that will include devices.
“The partnership will focus on a single, enabling affordable access to smartphones across all price categories. Airtel Customer; second, the co-creation of India-specific use cases for 5G; And third, accelerating the cloud ecosystem for enterprises across India, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs),” says Aliasgar Shakir, Telecom Analyst, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.
He further added, “Bharti can leverage Google’s technology platform to explore monetization of digital offerings. This a.) a large pool (>300 million) of feature phone customers in the market through Google-enabled affordable devices. a) it can leverage the opportunity of Google. Bharti Airtel can get bigger value. From Google’s point of view, of course, it is seeing the benefit of tying up with a large telecom provider to build front-end solutions.”
This will be the second investment by Google, which two years ago committed to invest $10 billion in India through its digitization fund over 5 to 7 years through equity deals and tie-ups. In July 2020, Google invested $4.5 billion in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms for a 7.73 percent stake.
Bharti Airtel board has approved the issuance of 71,176,839 equity shares of face value of Rs 5 each to Google International LLC on a preferential basis for Rs 5,224.3 crore (approximately USD 700 million) at Rs 734 per equity share of the company. ,
“Airtel and Google share a vision to grow India’s digital dividend through innovative products. With our future-ready network, digital platform, last mile delivery and payments ecosystem, we are committed to increasing the depth and breadth of India. Look forward to working closely with Google for the digital ecosystem,” Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in the statement.
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