Google to invest upto $1bn in Bharti Airtel to help grow India's digital ecosystem

28 Jan 2022 , 10:31 AM

Bharti Airtel Ltd. announced that the company will partner a long-term, multi-year contract with Google to advance the growth of India’s digital ecosystem. The two will collaborate to bring best-in-class end-to-end products that cater to customer needs, enrich the customer experience, and bring expertise in solving their problems of affordability, access, and digital inclusion.

As part of this partnership, Google intends to put up $1 billion in its Google for India Digitization Fund, which includes equity investment as well as a corpus for potential agreements, which are yet to be finalized and completed over the course of the next 5 years.

The agreement so far elucidates a $700 Million investment in Bharti Airtel at a price of Rs 734 per share. While up to $300 million will be utilized towards implementing further commercial agreements, which will include investments in expanding Airtel’s offerings that include a range of devices to consumers under innovative affordability programs as well as other well-thought programs that are aimed at accelerating access and digital inclusion across India’s digital ecosystem.

The two organizations strive to build a robust digital ecosystem for consumers around the world as both organizations consider the importance of a connected India. Both organizations are dedicated to working towards developing an open technology ecosystem that will cater to customer needs with innovative digital services and have accorded to jointly explore and invest across a wide spectrum of areas to create digital solutions that emphasize fulfilling India’s requirements.

As part of this commercial agreement, the two companies will mutually work together on building extensive offerings of Airtel that include a wide range of Android-enabled devices to customers through innovative digital affordability programs. Together, the companies will continue to explore further opportunities to minimize the barriers of owning a smartphone across a range of price points.

“Airtel is a leading pioneer contributing significantly to India’s digital future, and we are glad to partner on a shared vision for expanding connectivity and ensuring equitable access to the Internet for Indians,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

Both companies will also potentially work together to 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.

Bharti Airtel is currently trading at Rs717.90 up by Rs10.7 or 1.51% from its previous closing of Rs707.20 on the BSE.