Google to invest $1 billion in India’s Bharti Airtel for digital market push

• Google will get preferential access to 71,176,839 equity shares of Bharti Airtel at Rs 734 per share

• The tech giant will pay $700 million for a 1.28 % equity in the company

Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google will invest up to $1 billion in Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd. as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund

Google will pay $700 million for a 1.28 % equity in Bharti Airtel, and will invest up to $300 million in multiyear commercial arrangements, the firms said on Friday. 

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The partnership will focus on enabling affordable access to smartphones across price ranges, and will continue to explore building on their existing partnerships to potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, and help accelerate the cloud ecosystem for businesses across India, the companies said. 

“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,” Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and Alphabet, said in a statement Friday.

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Airtel and Google will collaborate to expand on Airtel's wide offerings to consumers, which include a variety of Android-enabled smartphones, through new affordability schemes. In partnership with other device makers, the firms will continue to explore more options to lower the barriers to owning a smartphone across a range of price points.

Google International LLC would be granted preferential access to 71,176,839 equity shares of Bharti Airtel at Rs 734 per share, for a total of Rs 5,224.38 crore ($700 million).

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“Airtel and Google share the vision to grow India’s digital dividend through innovative products,” Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel said, in a statement. “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.”

(I USD = 75.09 INR)

Picture Credits: The News Indian Express