Bharti on African safari again with Kuwait's Zain

Hitting the acquisition trail once again in a month, the homegrown telecom giant Bharti Airtel is exploring the possibility to snap up the operations of the Kuwait-based Zain Telecom in the fast growing African markets.

Pushing ahead aggressively with its global ambitions, on the back of diminishing revenues from its domestic operations as tariff has hit rock-bottom following one-paisa-per-second calls, Bharti's move to buy out Zain's African business, comes on the heels of the entity acquiring majority stake in the Bangladesh-based Warid Telecom for $300 million (about Rs 1,360 crore) on January 12.

According to analysts, Bharti is not leaving out any possible opportunities, which could help the entity to expand its international footprints. If the Zain deal goes through, it would catapult the New Delhi-based company to one of the top 10 telcos in the world.

Bharti, the country's largest telco, today said it will enter into exclusive talks to acquire the Kuwait-based Zain Telecom's African operations, for an enterprise value of $10.7 billion.

Zain Telecom operates in 17 African countries and Bharti's offer is for buying businesses in all the regions except that of Sudan and Morocco.

Bharti,'s which has nearly 125 million users in the country, earlier efforts to enter the emerging African market received a major jolt last September, after it called off its months-long $23-billion merger talks with the South African MTN Group.

It can be noted that the talks between the two Bharti and MTN failed twice in as many years.

Bharti's acquisition offer for Zain's African operations comes in the backdrop of the state-run telcos-- BSNL and MTNL --looking to own a pie in Zain.

Last year, the two state-run telcos, seeking to get a foothold in the African market, had expressed interest in acquisition of a stake in Zain. However, later on they went slow on the plan.

Zain is estimated to have over 40 million subscribers in Africa.