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Google has committed to invest up to $1 billion in a partnership with Airtel as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund
The Competition Commission of India has cleared the partnership between Bharti Airtel and Google that was announced earlier this year. Bharti Airtel had announced that , Google intends to invest up to $1 Billion, as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund, which includes equity investment as well as a corpus for potential commercial agreements, to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the course of the next five years.
The deal states that this investment would mean an amount of $700 Million to acquire around 1.28% ownership in Airtel and up to $300 Million toward potential multi-year commercial agreements. 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, said Airtel at the time.
The CCI has cleared this deal by issuing a statement that says: “The Acquirer and Target have executed an Investment Agreement (IA) per which the Acquirer proposes to acquire a minority and non-controlling stake of 1.28% of equity share capital in the Target. Along with the IA, the Acquirer and the Target through their affiliates have also entered into certain commercial deals. The Parties also intend to enter into certain other commercial arrangements in future. The CCI approved the proposed combination on the basis of modifications offered by the Acquirer,” while also mentioning that a detailed order regarding the same will follow.
As part of the agreement, both companies will also focus on shaping and growing the cloud ecosystem in India to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Airtel serves over one million small and medium businesses with its enterprise connectivity offering, and this partnership will help accelerate digital adoption.