After Investing in Jio, Google To Invest up to $1 Billion in Bharti Airtel

In 2020, Google and Meta had invested Rs 33,737 crore and Rs 43,574 crore respectively in Reliance's Jio Platforms.

Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel Ltd. For representation purposes.

(Photo Courtesy: BloombergQuint)

Bharti Airtel on Friday announced that Google is planning to invest up to $1 billion (Rs 7,503 crore) in the telecom company as a part of its India-specific fund, Economic Times reported.

In 2020, Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) had invested Rs 33,737 crore and Rs 43,574 crore respectively in Reliance's Jio Platforms.

Google will reportedly acquire 1.28 percent of Airtel with an investment of $700 million, at Rs 734 per share. Up to $300 million will potentially go towards multi-year commercial agreements.

"As part of this partnership, Google intends to invest up to $1 billion, as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund, which includes equity investment as well as a corpus for potential commercial agreements."

Bharti Airtel

Airtel's stock price surged over 2 percent to Rs 725 in early trade on Friday morning.

Focus on Smartphone Access, 5G, Cloud Services

The telecom operator added that the partnership will focus on enabling affordable access to smartphones and potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, the report said.

It will also focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India.

The two companies will reportedly work together to expand Airtel's offerings, aimed at getting a range of Android-enabled devices to consumers via affordability programmes.

"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."

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Airtel Chairman

Airtel serves over one million small and medium businesses with its enterprise connectivity offering, and this partnership could help accelerate digital adoption, according to the publication.

The deal now awaits regulatory approvals.

(With inputs from The Economic Times.)