{"id":42740,"date":"2022-01-28T12:39:44","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T12:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=f26925da0c68bf50aed554f7a80da1a0"},"modified":"2022-01-28T12:39:44","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T12:39:44","slug":"google-to-invest-up-to-1-billion-in-indias-second-largest-telco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/google-to-invest-up-to-1-billion-in-indias-second-largest-telco\/","title":{"rendered":"Google to invest up to $1 billion in India\u2019s second largest telco"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Zach Marzouk<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
28 Jan, 2022<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Google<\/a> is investing up to $1 billion in Bharti<\/span> Airtel<\/span> as part of its Google for India Digitisation Fund.<\/p>\n

The deal includes an investment of $700 million to acquire a 1.28% ownership in the Indian telco and up to $300 million towards mutually agreed multi-year commercial agreements over the course of the next five years.<\/p>\n

As part of the first commercial agreement under the deal, the companies will work to scale Airtel\u2019s<\/span> offerings that cover a range of devices through affordability programmes. In the long term, both companies also plan to co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G<\/a> and other standards, and focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India by helping to accelerate digital transformation.<\/p>\n

Google also said it\u2019s looking to create new business models to help grow the Android OEM ecosystem in India with Airtel<\/span>, but didn\u2019t specify what kind of models these would be.<\/p>\n

It also highlighted that it has made steady progress on the goals it set out to achieve with its Google for India Digitisation Fund, including building an India-focused Android<\/a> experience and partnering with companies that build localised content experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cAirtel<\/span> is a leading pioneer shaping India\u2019s 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,\u201d said Sundar<\/span> Pichai<\/span>, CEO of Google and Alphabet. \u201cOur commercial and equity investment in Airtel<\/span> 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Airtel<\/span> has around 30.43% market share of wireless subscribers in India as of 30 November, 2021, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India<\/a>. Reliance Jio<\/span> leads the market with a 36.71% share, while Vodafone Idea has 22.88%.<\/p>\n

Google\u00a0outlined in 2020 that it would invest $10 billion in India<\/a> over the following five to seven years through its India Digitisation Fund. The company is set to invest it through a mix of equity investments, partnerships, operations, infrastructure, and ecosystem investments.<\/p>\n

Google said its goal was to make the Internet helpful for 1.3 billion Indians and help power the country\u2019s economic engine.<\/p>\n

Google, however, isn\u2019t the only tech firm that has invested in Indian telcos, as in July 2020 Intel invested $253.5 million in Jio platforms, the country\u2019s biggest telco<\/a>, through its Intel Capital investment arm. The deal gave it a 0.39% stake in Jio<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Three months earlier, Facebook also invested $5.7 billion in Jio<\/span>, as the telco\u2019s owner Mukesh<\/span> Ambani<\/span> was selling off 20-25% of the company to raise money for its debt-ridden parent company, Reliance Industries. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zach Marzouk<\/p>\n

28 Jan, 2022 <\/p>\n

Google is investing up to $1 billion in Bharti Airtel as part of its Google for India Digitisation Fund.
\nThe deal includes an investment of $700 million to acquire a 1.28% ownership in the India…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42741,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42740\/revisions\/42741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}