Bharti Airtel and Google said on Friday, January 28, 2022 that they will collaborate to sign a long-term, multi-year agreement to accelerate the development of India’s digital ecosystem, under which Google intends to invest up to $1 billion.

The amount is part of the $10 billion “Google India Digitization Fund” announced by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in 2020 and will include equity investments as well as a corpus of potential commercial agreements to be determined and the two companies said in a statement to agree on mutually agreed terms within the next five years. “Together, they will deliver best-in-class end-to-end products to meet customer needs, deliver a premium customer experience, and leverage their expertise to address affordability, access and digital inclusion,” they added.

The deal includes an investment of $700 million for a 1.28 percent ownership of Airtel, and up to $300 million for a potential multi-year commercial agreement. The partnership will focus on enabling affordable access to smartphones at a price range and will continue to explore co-creation of India-specific network domain use cases targeting 5G and other standards, building on existing partnerships, and Helping Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Ecosystems Across India

As part of their first commercial agreement, Airtel and Google will collaborate to build Airtel’s wide range of products, offering consumers a range of Android-enabled devices through an innovative affordability program, the statement added. It said the two companies will work together to explore more opportunities to work with various device makers to lower the barriers to owning smartphones of all price points.

“Depending on the partnership’s larger strategic goals, the two companies may also co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, with cutting-edge implementations. Airtel is already using Google’s 5G-enabled Evolved Packet Core and Software Defined Networking. platform, and plans to explore expanding the deployment of Google’s network virtualization solutions to provide customers with a superior network experience,” it added.

The two companies will also focus on shaping and growing India’s cloud ecosystem to accelerate its digital transformation journey.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel, said: “Airtel and Google share a vision to increase India’s digital dividend through innovative products. With our future-ready network, digital platform, last-mile distribution and payment ecosystem, we look forward to working with Google is working closely to increase the depth and breadth of India’s digital ecosystem.”

Complete News Source : The Hindu