Skip to content
  • All News
  • Regional News
    • Southeast Asia News
    • South Asia News
    • Northeast Asia News
    • Australasia News
  •   Awards
  • Events
    • All Events
    • Southeast Asia Events
    • South Asia Events
    • Middle East Events
    • Northeast Asia Events
    • Australasia Events
    • Past Events
  • Our Story
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • All News
  • Regional News
    • Southeast Asia News
    • South Asia News
    • Northeast Asia News
    • Australasia News
  •   Awards
  • Events
    • All Events
    • Southeast Asia Events
    • South Asia Events
    • Middle East Events
    • Northeast Asia Events
    • Australasia Events
    • Past Events
  • Our Story
  • Contact Us
Member Login
Login
South Asia News

Google to invest up to $1B in Airtel as part of India Digitisation Fund

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) and Google announced that they will partner on a long-term, multi-year agreement to accelerate the growth of India’s digital ecosystem.

Together, they 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.

As part of this partnership, Google intends to invest up to $1B, as part of its Google for India Digitisation Fund, which includes equity investment as well as a corpus for potential commercial agreements, to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the course of the next five years.

This will comprise of a $700 million equity investment in Bharti Airtel at a price per share of INR 734 and up to $300 million that will go towards implementing commercial agreements, which will include investments in scaling Airtel’s offerings that cover 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, the company said.

This deal will be subject to necessary regulatory approvals.

“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,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel.

As a part of its 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 programs. Together, the companies 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.

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.

“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. Our commercial and equity investment in Airtel is a continuation of our Google for India Digitisation Fund’s efforts to increase access to smartphones, enhance connectivity to support new business models, and help companies on their digital transformation journey,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

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.

Publish on W.Media
  • January 28, 2022
Author Info - W.Media
Anuradha Nagar
Anuradha Nagar
Share This Article
PrevPrevious PostHuawei to Construct 88MW Data Centre in Batam, Indonesia
Next PostSenseTime Commences Artificial Intelligence Data Center in ShanghaiNext
Other Popular Posts
Image Credit: WGOQATAR
World News
July 6, 2022

Ooredoo Signs Joint Agreement with BICS to accelerate Digital Transformation

Rajesh Goenka, Director, Sales & Marketing, RP tech India.
South Asia News
December 15, 2021

RP tech India announces partnership with Belden

Image credit: Power Info Today
South Asia News
September 27, 2021

Haryana CM announces Subsidies on E-vehicles Purchase

submarine cable1
Australasia News
December 1, 2021

Southern Cross NEXT Submarine Cable to Complete Pacific Journey & land in NSW

data center 6
South Asia News
May 6, 2022

NTT Launches new Hyperscale Data Centre campus in Navi Mumbai

Photo: Equinix SG5 Singapore Data Centre
Southeast Asia News
April 21, 2022

Equinix announces US$86 million for SG5 Data Centre

W.Media is a Technology Publisher & Community Hub.

We serve the cloud/IT, data centers and network infrastructure professionals through media solutions and business events.

Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/w-media-company

Receive the latest news.

We'll keep you in the loop.

Great! now press

Our Story

Contact Us

Advertise on W. Media Platforms

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

© 2023 W.Media. All Rights Reserved