Tag: Bharti Airtel

Azim Premji picks up 6% stake in Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Telecoms firm Bharti Airtel on Thursday sold a 6% stake in Future Retail to PremjiInvest, the family investment arm of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, for about Rs 1,700 crore.

PremjiInvest is already an investor in one of the group entities, Future Lifestyle Fashions.

Future Retail will get Rs 575 crore from Bharti via a claw-back provision and the money will be used to reduce the company’s debt, said Kishore Biyani, the founder and chief executive officer of Future Group.

Bharti still holds about 3% stake in Future Retail via a group entity called Cedar Support Services.

According to Biyani, there is no sense of urgency from Bharti to sell the remaining stake.

“Cedar is a Mittal family owned entity which held around 9.3 percent in Future Retail. They have sold 6 percent of stake to PremjiInvest and PremjiInvest is one of the larger investor in consumer space in India. They are also investors with us in Future Lifestyle Fashion,” he said.

The deal comes at a time when Biyani is trying to shore up funds as the domestic e-commerce battle heats up.

The Indian retail landscape has changed drastically over the last years with the entry of global players such as Amazon and Walmart.

US retail behemoth Walmart has invested $16 billion in homegrown e-commerce startup Flipkart, valuing it at $21 billion.

And the speculation is rife that billionaire Jeff Bezos-led Amazon will also ramp up its India investment to $7 billion from earlier $5 billion.

Future Retail, the operator of Big Bazaar hyper and supermarket chain, is India’s retail pioneer. Biyani told the Economic Times last month that he was looking to sell at least 10% stake in the company to a global retailer.

Shares in Future Retail recovered most of their losses and were down 0.4% to Rs 565 at 11:55 IST on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The stock fell as much as 2.8% earlier in the session.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Trai asks telcos to put all tariffs online from June 30

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Infratel-Indus mega tower merger unlikely to hit jobs, says Bharti official

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The merger of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers to create a $ 14.6 billion firm with world’s second-largest number of mobile masts — is not expected to lead to any job loss given the disparate and largely non-overlapping nature of operations of both companies, a senior Bharti official said.

There will be an overlap at the corporate level for less than 100 positions but that too will be accommodated in anticipation of business growth and in new projects such as smart cities, said the official familiar with the blockbuster deal struck last month.

The merged entity will have in its fold more than 163,000 towers across India – largest after China Tower. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone will jointly control the combined firm.

The transaction, subject to regulatory and other approvals, including from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Department of Telecom (FDI approval), is expected to close before the end of the fiscal year.

The merged entity, which will be called Indus Towers Ltd, will remain listed. Bharti Airtel, which currently owns 53.5 per cent in Bharti Infratel, will get 33.8 per cent to 37.2 per cent stake in the combined entity. Its shareholding is dependent upon what Aditya Birla Group’s Idea and Providence do with their minority shareholding in Indus Tower.

Similarly, Vodafone India will get between 26.7 percent and 29.4 percent of the Indus-Bharti Infratel combine.

Vodafone has 42 percent stake in Indus Tower. Bharti Infratel too has an equivalent stake while the remaining is with Aditya Birla’s Idea (11.15 per cent) and Providence (4.85 per cent).

Bharti Infratel has 1,248 employees on a standalone basis while Indus Towers has 2,440 employees as on March 2018.

Over the years, Bharti Infratel has been successful in building a culture of innovation and excellence with a strong people’ focus. We believe given the disparate and largely non-overlapping nature of operations of both the companies, the combined entity will be able to absorb current employees post the merger, the Bharti official said, responding to a specific query on the impact of the merger on existing jobs.

The official added: A few employees with role overlaps will be offered opportunities in new projects like Smart Cities which is the next big focus for the company. These positions at the head office adding up to 80-90 employees will be accommodated in view of business growth and incoming projects, the official noted.

Bharti Infratel did not respond to an e-mail query.

Indus Towers currently operates in 15 telecom service areas or circles while Bharti Infratel’s operations are focused on the remaining seven circles.

A statement issued on April 25 to announce the merger had stated the combination of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers, with their highly complementary footprints, will create a pan-India tower company with the ability to offer high-quality passive infrastructure services to all operators on a non-discriminatory basis, needed to support the pan-India expansion of wireless broadband services using 4G/4G+/5G technologies .

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Idea-Vodafone trying their best to retain customers before the merger

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Idea Cellular and Vodafone are now out all guns blazing by sending out separate but similar mails to their customers, signalling that the telecom companies are set to close the merger deal that will create India’s largest telecom company by next month, hence competing against Reliance Jio, The Economic Times reported.

The mails started going out by the managing directors of Idea and Vodafone to their subscribers on Wednesday, the report said.

“The merger process is on track and expected to be completed in the first half of the calendar year 2018,” Himanshu Kapania, managing director of Idea Cellular, said in his mail.

The merged entity “will certainly enhance your mobile experience by providing greater broadband speeds, better voice quality and indoor coverage,” as said to The Economic Times.

Both the networks will have a combined user base of over 700 million, catering about 270,000 GSM sites and a mobile broadband network of 300,000 sites (3G and 4G).

India has over 1 billion mobile phone subscribers, the report said.

The Idea-Vodafone merger will put out Bharti Airtel from its top place with an almost 42% customer market share and 37% revenue market share, The Economic Times said adding that the operators are awaiting the final nod from the Department of Telecommunications.

Approvals from the capital markets regulator, National Company Law Tribunal and Competition Commission of India are already in place, the report added.

Aruna Sundararajan, Telecom Secretary, said that she did not foresee any difficulty in the merger of the telecom company and that it “should get done” by June on Thursday.

Vodafone’s mails said the company will have twice the number of towers. It added that the combined entity will invest in infrastructure and roll out smarter technologies, Internet of Things, better customer service, high-speed home broadband, digital wallets, cloud services and VoLTE technology, among others, the report said.

Last month, Balesh Sharma was appointed to be the chief executive officer of the merged entity, who, according to analysts, will have to hit the ground running as both operators have trailed Reliance Jio Infocomm and Airtel in rolling out 4G and Voice over LTE services and face an uphill battle to retain and add subscribers while regaining financial health, the report added.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow