Tech giant Google will invest up to $1 billion in Bharti Airtel through a mix of equity and commercial partnerships in areas like affordable smartphones, networks, and cloud. This is Google's second investment in an Indian telecom service provider (after Reliance Jio) and is part of its $10-billion India digitisation fund. Discussion between the two companies had been going on since the first half of 2021 and culminated in an announcement last week.
The $1-billion commitment includes an equity investment of $700 million. Shares will be issued to Google on a preferential basis at Rs 734 apiece and will give Google a 1.28 per cent stake in the company. Additionally, Google will set aside $300 million for potential investment in areas like smart phone access, networks, and cloud. The investment will help Airtel to offer a wide range of affordable devices to consumers.
Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal said the company had no plans to develop its own exclusive smartphone. It will work with partners, including lenders, device manufacturers, and e-commerce companies, to improve the availability of smartphones, he added.
The other two areas of collaboration are 5G and cloud. Both companies will potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards. Airtel uses Google’s 5G-ready Evolved Packet Core and software defined network platforms.
They will also focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, the companies said.
