Bharti Airtel rises as Google to invest up to $1 billion

Bharti Airtel rose 1.65% to Rs 718.90 after the telecom operator on Friday announced that Google will invest $1 billion in the company as part of its India Digitization Fund.

Google and Bharti Airtel will partner on a long-term, multi-year agreement to accelerate the growth of India's digital ecosystem. As part of the partnership, Google will commit to equity investment as well as a corpus for potential commercial agreements, to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the course of the next five years.

Google will make an equity investment of $700 million for a 1.28% stake in Bharti Airtel at a price of Rs 734 per share. Meanwhile, $300 million will go towards implementing commercial agreements, which will include investments in scaling Airtel's offerings that covers a range of devices to consumers via innovative affordability programs as well as other offerings aimed at accelerating access and digital inclusion across India's digital ecosystem. The deal will be subject to necessary regulatory approvals

Both organizations are committed to working towards building an open technology ecosystem that serves customers and businesses with innovative digital services, and have agreed to jointly explore and invest across a wide spectrum of areas to create digital solutions that uniquely serve India's requirements.

Under the larger strategic goals of the partnership, both companies will also potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel said, Airtel and Google share the vision to grow India's digital dividend through innovative products. With our future ready network, digital platforms, last mile distribution and payments ecosystem, we look forward to working closely with Google to increase the depth and breadth of India's digital ecosystem.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet said, Airtel is a leading pioneer shaping India's digital future, and we are proud to partner on a shared vision for expanding connectivity and ensuring equitable access to the Internet for more Indians. Our commercial and equity investment in Airtel is a continuation of our Google for India Digitization Fund's efforts to increase access to smartphones, enhance connectivity to support new business models, and help companies on their digital transformation journey.

Bharti Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 480 Mn customers in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa. Airtel is India's largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa.

On a consolidated basis, Bharti Airtel posted a net profit of Rs 1,134 crore in Q2 FY22 as against a net loss of Rs 763.2 crore in Q2 FY21. It posted quarterly revenues of Rs 28,326 crore, rising 13% YoY on a reported basis.

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