Google to buy 1.28% stake worth $700mn in Bharti Airtel; telecom shares surge 6% in early trade

Bharti Airtel shares surged as much as 6 per cent in the Friday's intraday early trade on the NSE after the telecom giant announced that Google will invest up to $1 billion in a partnership with Airtel as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund.  

Shares of Bharti Airtel surged to Rs754 apiece on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) after the news about Google investing in the telecom company surfaced. At 10.25 am, shares erased early gains to traed higher by around 2 per cent to Rs719 per share on the NSE. 

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The deal includes investment of $700M to acquire 1.28%* ownership in Airtel and up to $300M toward potential multi-year commercial agreements. Up to $300M that will go towards implementing 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. 

"We wish to inform you that the Board of Directors (‘Board’) of the Company, at its meeting held today i.e. January 28, 2022, approved the issuance of up to 71,176,839 equity shares of face value of Rs. 5/- each of the Company to Google International LLC at a price of Rs. 734 per equity share aggregating to Rs 52,243.80 million, subject to the approval of regulatory/ statutory authorities and the shareholders," read the regulatory filing by the telecom company.    

Bharti said that 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.