Google | Airtel
Google to invest up to $1 billion in Airtel to develop India specific 5G services
Telecom major Bharti Airtel and Google are going to partner to boost India's digital ecosystem with the US-based tech giant investing up to $1 billion under its Google for India Digitization Fund.
This includes 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.
This includes Google's acquisition of 1.28 percent ownership in Airtel with a $700 million equity investment at a price per share of Rs 734.
Further, Google's investment in Airtel will include up to $300 million that will go towards implementing commercial agreements, which will include investments in scaling Airtel’s offerings that cover 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.
This deal will be subject to necessary regulatory approvals.
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.”
With this partnership, the two companies intend to build 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.
Google will work with Airtel to extensive offerings that cover a range of Android-enabled devices to consumers via innovative affordability programs.
The partnership also aims to continue to explore further opportunities to bring down the barriers of owning a smartphone across a range of price points, in partnership with various device manufacturers.
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, with cutting-edge implementations.
Airtel is already using Google’s 5G-ready Evolved Packet Core & Software Defined Network platforms and plans to explore scaling up the deployment of Google’s network virtualization solutions to deliver a superior network experience to their customers.
Both companies will also focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India to accelerate their digital transformation journeys.
Airtel serves over one million small and medium businesses with its enterprise connectivity offering, and this partnership will help accelerate digital adoption.
“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,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.
“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,” he added.
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