Bharti Airtel Concall Highlights: Google partnership is much more strategic than financial investment via equity stake sale, says Airtel

"Devices networks and cloud adoption will be fired up with Google partnership," Vittal said, adding that the partnership with the search engine giant will provide the company with "cutting edge tech solutions".

According to Airtel, the partnership with Google will accelerate cloud adoption in SMEs and enterprises. The telecom major said it will develop India-specific 5G use cases along with Google. The company is "truly well poised for the future as our customers migrate to 5G", it said.

The Bharti Airtel CEO clarified that the company currently has no plan to create its own smart phone devices but will build alliance. The company also noted that its partnership with Google is "much more strategic" than a financial investment via equity stake sale.

Search engine giant Google's investment will be as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund. This includes not only equity investment, but a corpus for potential commercial agreements, to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the course of the next five years.

Also, the Google will acquire 1.28% ownership in Airtel by investing $700 million and the rest up to $300 million toward potential multi-year commercial agreements.

" ... the Board of Directors (‘Board’) of the Company, at its meeting held today i.e. January 28, 2022, approved the issuance of upto 71,176,839 equity shares of face value of Rs 5- each of the Company to Google International LLC on a preferential basis in accordance with Chapter V of the SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2018 (‘ICDR Regulations’), as amended and other applicable laws, 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 of the Company at the Extraordinary General Meeting," the filing said.

Both Bharti Airtel and Google will work together to build on Airtel’s extensive offerings that covers a range of Android-enabled devices to consumers via innovative affordability programs. Also, the firms will explore further opportunities to bring down the barriers of owning a smartphone across a range of price points, in partnership with various device manufacturers.