Google to invest up to $1 billion in Airtel

Bharti Airtel and Google has announced a multi-year agreement to boost India’s digital ecosystem, with Sundar Pichai-led tech giant investing $700 million to acquire 1.28 per cent ownership in Airtel and up to $300 million toward commercial agreement.

With this investment, Airtel will manufacture low-cost smartphones and other digital devices in India.

The two companies jointly announced this on Friday. Google will make this investment through its India Digitization Fund. This investment will take place over the next five years. With the help of this investment, affordable smartphones and other Android devices will be made available to the people. Apart from that, the investment will be used to create a unique network domain for India with 5G and other cutting edge technologies in mind.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, President, Bharti Airtel, said that both the companies want to accelerate digitalisation in India. We are ready to work with Google to expand the Indian digital ecosystem. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said that Airtel is one of the key players in shaping India's digital future.