Vodafone to invest Rs 13,000 crore in India

Vodafone announced on Friday that it will invest Rs 13,000 crore in its India services. A statement released by the UK-based company said the investment will be channeled towards capacity augmentation and new business initiatives. The announcement comes on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao.

"We are ideally poised to partner the Government of India in fulfilling important initiatives and are pleased to announce our enhanced commitment to India through further investments," said Colao.

The company said that of the Rs 13,000 crore, it will use Rs 8,000 crore to upgrade its existing network, Rs 3000 crore to increase capacity and upgrade its high-end technology centre and IT and customer experience centres in Pune and Ahmedabad and Rs 1,000 crore towards setting up a state-of-the-art data centre. It will also be channeling Rs 1,000 crore towards its payment bank Vodafone M-Pesa. Vodafone will also increase its staff count to 15,000 employees over the next two years.

Since starting operations in India in 2007, Vodafone has already invested over Rs 111,000 crore and is today the largest FDI investor in the country.