Google acquires 1.28% stake in Airtel, invests up to $1 Billion

Bharti Airtel and Google announced a multi-year agreement to boost India’s digital ecosystem, with Sundar Pichai-led tech giant Google investing $700 million to acquire 1.28 per cent ownership in Airtel and up to $300 million toward commercial agreements.

According to the reports, the $700 million equity investment in Bharti Airtel is at a price per share of Rs 734, while $300 million will go towards investments in scaling Airtel’s offerings that covers a range of devices to consumers. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel said “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.”

As a part of their first commercial agreement, Airtel and Google will work together to build on Airtel’s extensive offerings that cover a range of Android-enabled devices to consumers via innovative affordability programmes. The companies stated that they will 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.

Both companies will also potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, with cutting-edge implementations.