Bharti Airtel shareholders have cleared the issue of equity shares by the company to Google on a preferential basis, reports the Indian Economic Times. This follows the Big Tech behemoth’s recent purchase of a 1.28 per cent stake in the telco for $700 million. Google is backing Airtel’s plan to invest $160 million in operations involving their jointly owned venture Indus Towers and subsidiaries Nxtra Data and Bharti Hexacom in the course of the next four years.
“The resolutions, as part of special businesses, were approved with a 99.99 per cent majority at Airtel’s extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on February 26,” according to the telco’s exchange filing.
In January 2021 Google announced that it’s to invest up to $1 billion in Bharti Airtel, including a 1.28 per cent stake in the Indian telco for $700 million. The other $300 million will fund commercial pacts with Airtel to make smartphones more affordable, drive 4G upgrades and co-develop network domain 5G use cases. The money will come from the $10 billion ‘Google for India Digitization Fund’.
A senior Airtel executive also said that the telco will spend Rs 88,000 crore ($120 million) on its Indus tower business, Rs 15,000 crore ($20 million) on services of it data-centre arm Nxtra and Rs 14,000 crore ($19 million) handling transactions through Bharti Hexacom. Airtel owns 70 per cent in Bharti Hexacom, which runs mobile services in Rajasthan and parts of the Northeast.