Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Friday announced that internet giant Google plans to invest up to $1 billion in a multi-year agreement to push India’s digital ecosystem.
Edited by Prashun Talukdar
New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Friday announced that internet giant Google plans to invest up to $1 billion in a multi-year agreement to push India’s digital ecosystem. Airtel, in a regulatory filing, said, “As part of this partnership, Google intends to invest up to $1 billion (around ₹ 7,400 crore) over the next five years.”
“Deal includes investment of $700 million to acquire 1.28 per cent ownership in Airtel at a price per share of ₹ 734 and up to $300 million toward potential multi-year commercial agreements,” Airtel stated.
“The partnership will focus on enabling affordable access to smartphones across price ranges, and will continue to explore building on their existing partnerships to potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, and help accelerate the cloud ecosystem for businesses across India,” the telecom company mentioned.
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.”
“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.”
Both companies will also focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, the regulatory filing further read.
Source : Ndtv.com
