Indian operator Bharti Airtel and Google have signed a multi-year agreement to support growth of India’s digital ecosystem. As part of this partnership, Google plans to invest up to USD 1 billion, as part of its Google for India Digitization 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. The deal includes investment of USD 700 million to acquire 1.28 percent ownership in Airtel and up to USD 300 million toward potential multi-year commercial agreements.
Google will make a USD 700 million equity investment in Bharti Airtel at a price per share of INR 734. The additional USD 300 million will go towards implementing commercial agreements, which will include investments in scaling Airtel’s offerings that covers a range of devices to consumers via affordability programs as well as other offerings aimed at accelerating access and digital inclusion across India’s digital ecosystem.
This deal will be subject to necessary regulatory approvals.
As a part of its first commercial agreement, Airtel and Google will work together to build on Airtel’s offerings of Android-enabled devices to consumers via affordability programs. Together, the companies plan 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.
Airtel and Google will also potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards. Airtel is already using Google’s 5G-ready Evolved Packet Core and Software Defined Network platforms, and plans to explore scaling up the deployment of Google’s network virtualisation for customers.
Both companies also plan to focus on expanding the cloud ecosystem in India to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Airtel reports it currently serves over 1 million small and medium businesses with its enterprise connectivity offering, and this partnership is expected to help accelerate digital adoption.
This is Google's second investment in the Indian mobile market, after acquiring a stake in Jio Platforms in 2020. The company has also worked with Jio and other operators on developing low-cost Android phones for the Indian market.
