Private Equity

PE Fund Investments

Google to pick up 1.28% stake in Airtel for $700-M

BSE Release   Business Standard  

Mountain View, CA (USA)-based Google Inc is to make an equity investment of USD 700 million (INR 5,224 crore) for a 1.28% stake in New Delhi-based, publicly listed telecom firm Bharti Airtel via the Google for India Digitization Fund. The investment will help Airtel to offer a wide range of affordable devices to consumers. The two companies will co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, with implementations. Google will potentially invest another USD 300 million over the next five years, for partnerships in areas like smart phone access, networks, and cloud.

From the Venture Intelligence PE-VC Deal Database: In Jul-2020, Google had agreed to invest USD 4.48 Billion for a 7.73% equity stake in Reliance Jio Platforms. Jio and Google had agreed to jointly develop an entry level affordable smartphone with optimizations to the Android operating system and the Play Store.