Alphabet’s Google announced that it is investing up to $1 billion in Airtel as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund. The deal includes investment of $700 million to acquire 1.28% ownership in Bharti Airtel and up to $300 million towards potential multi-year commercial agreements, which will include investments in scaling Airtel’s offerings that covers a range of devices to consumers via innovative affordability programs as well as other offerings aimed at accelerating access and digital inclusion across India’s digital ecosystem.
This investment is part of a long term, multi-year agreement to accelerate the growth of India’s digital ecosystem. Together, both companies will work to bring best-in-class end-to-end products to serve customer needs, provide quality customer experience, and bring their expertise to solve problems of affordability, access, and digital inclusion.
Airtel is the second largest telecoms operator in India with over 300 million subscribers and over 480 million customers in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa.
Part of the commercial agreement includes both companies working on ways to bring down the barriers of owning a smartphone across a range of price points, in partnership with various device manufacturers.
Under the larger strategic goals of the partnership, both companies will also potentially co-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 virtualisation solutions to deliver a superior network experience to their customers.
Both companies will also focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Airtel serves over one million small and medium businesses with its enterprise connectivity offering, and this partnership will help accelerate digital adoption.
According to Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel on the partneship; “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.”
In June 2020, Google similarly invested over $4 billion in India’s largest operator, Jio, owned by tycoon Mukesh Ambani from the Google for India Digitization Fund.
This deal will be subject to necessary regulatory approvals.
