Bharti acquires 70% stake in Warid Telecom

Telecom major, Bharti Airtel, has announced that it has agreed to acquire 70% stake in Bangladesh-based, Warid Telecom. Bharti plans to make $300 million fresh investment in the company, thus taking the overall investment to $1 billion. The new funding will be for capacity expansion, coverage and innovative products.

Warid Telecom is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dhabi group and offers mobile services across all the 64 districts of Bangladesh. It has a total customer base of over 2.9 million. Dhabi group will continue to remain a strategic partner with balance 30% stake.

According to a release issued by Bharti Airtel to the BSE, the acquisition would be partly by purchase of existing shares held in Warid Telecom International by Dhabi Group for a nominal cnsideration and balance by way of issue of fresh shares at par.

"This landmark deal underlines our intent to further expand our operations to international markets where we can implant our unique business model and offer quality and affordable telecom services", saus Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel. He adds that, at the same time, it is symbol of the growing economic cooperation between the South Asian countries and we would like to thank the government of India and Bangladesh for their support and encouragement.

This will be Bharti's second operation outside India. The company launched its mobile services in Sri Lanka in January 2009 on a state-of-art 3.5G network.