Airtel initiates monetisation of digital businesses

CIOReviewIndia Team | Thursday, 18 February 2021, 08:57 IST

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Airtel Bharti Airtel on Wednesday set off its first step to unlock the value of its digital businesses by introducing a special committee of its board of directors.

Airtel said the committee would evaluate various alternatives for the reorganisation of businesses and shareholding structure of the company and its various subsidiaries to achieve the required flexibility and sharper focus on digital and non-telecom businesses. This, it said, would facilitate any unlocking of enhanced value for its stake-holders.

The company also announced the attainment of Warburg Pincus’s 20% stake in its direct-to-home (DTH) arm.

Airtel, which is locked in a fierce competition with Reliance Jio in the telecom space, aims to align the ownership of its consumer-facing business, with the Warburg Pincus transaction. Separately the Sunil Mittal-led company is looking to scale up and monetise its digital businesses, which include music streaming app Wynk, content platform Xstream, cloud-based communication platform Airtel IQ, along with others.

The digital resources have around 190million customers and contribute around rupees 100 crore in revenue annually. The firm hopes to boost it to over rupees 1,000 crore, Mittal said in a recent media interaction Warburg Pincus had acquired 20% in Bharti Telemedia in 2017 and is now exiting the venture for a total consideration of rupees 3,126 crore. This will be in the form of 36.47 million equity shares in Bharti Airtel at a price of rupees 600 per share and up to rupees 600 per share and up to rupees 1,037 crore in cash.

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