Shareholders of Indian multinational telecommunications services company Bharti Airtel have given their nod to the issue of equity shares by the firm to Google on “a preferential basis” following the tech giant’s recent acquisition of a 1.28% stake in the telco for USD 700 million.
In January, Google had announced that it would invest up to USD $1 Billion into Bharti Airtel, out of which USD $700 million will go towards a 1.28% stake of the telco and the remaining $300 million to form multi-year partnership deals. The investment into Airtel will come out of Google’s USD $10 billion ‘Google for India Digitisation Fund’.
These multi-year deals would be formed focusing on providing smartphones with subsidies in the Indian market, amongst other things such as developing 5G use cases.
According to a report by PTI, shareholders also approved Bharti Airtel’s plans to spend multi-billion dollars in related-party deals, including opex via joint venture Indus Towers.
The telco’s material related-party expenses, including opex spends over the next four years, would include INR 88,000 crore (USD 11.652 billion) in business with tower JV, Indus, INR 15,000 crore (USD 1.98 billion) for availing the services of data-centre arm, Nxtra and related-party transactions of up to INR 14,000 crore (USD 1.85 billion) with Bharti Hexacom, an Economic Times report stated.
“The resolutions (as part of special businesses) were approved with a 99.99% overwhelming majority at Airtel’s extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on February 26,” the Sunil Mittal-led telco said in an exchange filing.
Airtel is the second telco after the market leader Reliance Jio, to obtain funding from Google.
