Bharti Airtel slips on buzz Flipkart pulls out of Airtel Zero platform

Bharti Airtel fell 1.94% to Rs 416.20 at 14:19 IST on BSE on reports e-commerce major Flipkart ended talks with the company to join its new marketing platform for mobile application makers.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 14.43 points, or 0.05%, to 29,030.01.

On BSE, so far 1.15 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 3.64 lakh shares in the past one quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs 425 and a low of Rs 409.25 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 425.70 on 13 April 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 304 on 9 May 2014.

The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 13 April 2015, rising 6.02% compared with 1.90% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 22.50% as against Sensex's 5.90% rise.

The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 1998.70 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5.

India's e-commerce giant Flipkart was in negotiations to join Bharti Airtel's Airtel Zero platform, where mobile application makers pay for data usage, which then enables customers to use applications for free.

This had prompted debate in India on social media, with users arguing that such platforms go against the concept of net neutrality, where all traffic on the Internet is treated equally.

Flipkart reportedly announced its decision after a widespread backlash against the firm on social media and users voting down its app on the Android and Apple app stores after its CEO, Sachin Bansal, tweeted in support of Airtel Zero.

Bharti Airtel reportedly clarified that it backed net neutrality and that Airtel Zero was a toll-free data platform.

Bharti Airtel's consolidated net profit jumped 135.4% to Rs 1436.50 crore on 5.8% growth in net sales to Rs 23217.10 crore in Q3 December 2014 over Q3 December 2013.

Bharti Airtel is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top 4 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 319 million customers across its operations at the end of February 2015.

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