Bharti Airtel, India's largest listed telecom service provider on Tuesday, announced that Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm, plans to acquire up to 20 per cent equity stake in Bharti Telemedia Ltd, the DTH arm of Airtel, for around $350 million.
Of this, 15 per cent stake is expected to be sold by Bharti Airtel and the balance by another Bharti entity which holds 5 per cent stake.
Airtel board approved the transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals.
As part of the transaction, Viraj Sawhney, managing director, Warburg Pincus India, will join the board of Bharti Telemedia Ltd.
Upon closing of the transaction, Airtel will own an 80 per cent equity stake in Bharti Telemedia Ltd.
“Airtel TV is very well positioned in the DTH space, and we are committed to grow our share of the market through a combination of innovation, value engineering, customer service and distribution initiatives. We look forward to working with Warburg Pincus towards achieving our vision of making Airtel TV India’s leading DTH platform,” Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
Bharti Telemedia offers DTH services under the Airtel TV brand. It had around 14 million subscribers and around $550 million in revenues during the 12-month period ended September 30, 2017.
Airtel said that the DTH brand has a strong distribution infrastructure, with over 1,500 partners and over 1,58,000 recharge outlets in approximately 630 districts of the country.
It is led by Sunil Taldar, who joined as CEO in 2016 and brings over 28 years of experience in the fast-moving consumer goods industry across Asia.
“We believe that Airtel DTH is well positioned to capitalise on incremental growth in digitisation and new TV penetration in Tier 3 and 4 towns and rural areas,” Vishal Mahadevia, MD and co-head, Warburg Pincus India, said.
“Warburg Pincus is pleased to be working alongside Sunil Bharti Mittal and the Bharti group again following our successful partnership many years ago, and look forward to supporting the management team during the next phase of the Company's growth,” he added. Bharti Airtel fell 1.66 per cent to Rs 523.85 at close on the National Stock Exchange.
—TickerNews Service
After three days of gains, the market witnessed profit-booking with the key indices ending lower.
The Sensex snapped three days of gains on Tuesday as crude oil rebounded above $65 per barrel--the first time since June 2015--on caution over tightening market supply as a major pipeline in the UK
In a major relief to IT companies, the tax department has set aside a Rs 10,000 crore service tax demand notices on dozens of companies.
Reliance Industries, the promoters of Reliance Jio, is mulling listing in late 2018 or early 2019 of the company that has disrupted the telecom market and led to large-scale consolidation in the in