Google to invest $1 bn in Bharti Airtel

 

 

GOOGLE will invest as much as USD 1 billion in Bharti Airtel in picking up a 1.28 per cent stake and in scaling up offerings of India’s second-largest mobile phone operator, the telecom major said on Friday.

Alphabet Inc’s Google will pay USD 700 million (Rs 734 per share) for a 1.28 per cent stake in Bharti Airtel Ltd and the rest towards multi-year plans that will include devices.

This will be the second investment by Google, which had two years ago committed to investing USD 10 billion in India via its digitisation fund over 5 to 7 years through equity deals and tie-up.

It had in July 2020, invested USD 4.5 billion for a 7.73 per cent stake in billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms.

While the 2020 investment valued Jio Platforms’ equity at Rs 4.36 lakh crore (USD 58.1 billion), the USD 700 million investment announced on Friday values Bharti Airtel’s equity at Rs 4.1 lakh crore (USD 54.7 billion).

The US tech behemoth got a seat on Jio’s board and has co-developed JioPhone Next - the world’s most affordable all-touchscreen smartphone running on Pragati OS – an optimised version of Android OS. The funding from Google gives billionaire Sunil Mittal-led Bharti more firepower to bolster its 5G plans as well as take on market leader Jio.

Google made the investment as part of its Google for India Digitisation Fund. The amount Google invested in Jio was Rs 33,737 crore (USD 4.5 billion), which was 6.4 times its investment in Bharti Airtel at Rs 5,250 crore (USD 700 million).