Bharti Airtel, the second-largest telecom operator in the country, said that its shareholders had approved Google’s investment of USD $700 million into the company for a 1.28% stake. In addition to this, the shareholders or investors have also backed the telco’s plan of spending over Rs 1.17 lakh crore in related expenses, which would include its subsidiaries, Indus Towers, and moreover the next four years. In an exchange filing, Airtel said that the resolutions during the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on February 26 were approved by a 99.99% overwhelming majority.
Google Had Committed to Invest Up to USD $1 Billion Into Airtel
In January, Google had announced that it would invest up to USD $1 Billion into Bharti Airtel, out of which USD $700 million will go towards a 1.28% stake of the telco and the remaining $300 million to form multi-year partnership deals. These multi-year deals would be formed focusing on providing smartphones with subsidies in the Indian market, amongst other things such as developing 5G use cases. The USD $1 billion investment into Airtel will come out of Google’s USD $10 billion ‘Google for India Digitization Fund’. Bharti Airtel is the second telecom operator in the country after Reliance Jio to get an investment from Google. With Jio, Google’s partnership was more focused on building and selling an affordable 4G smartphone. However, with Airtel, the focus would be more on subsidies on smartphones as both the companies are not going to partner for developing one for the Indian market. Airtel also plans to spend Rs 1.17 lakh crore in material related-party expenses, including opex spends over the next four years. It would include Rs 15,000 crore for availing services of Nxtra (data centre arm), Rs 88,000 crore in business with tower joint venture (JV), Indus Towers, and Rs 14,000 crore with Bharti Hexacom. Airtel owns 70% of Bharti Hexacom that runs mobile services in parts of Northeast and Rajasthan.
