One of India’s smaller mobile network operators could be on the lookout for a new investor, it emerged this week.
Videocon is willing to sell as much as 49% of its mobile arm for the right price and would even consider ceding management control, an Indian press report claimed this week.
Rajkumar Dhoot, co-owner of Videocon, made the comment at a business summit in Gujarat this week, the Economic Times reported on Sunday. "If we are given [a] good offer, we can give away [a] 49% stake in our mobile operating business," the paper quoted Dhoot as saying.
The executive added that Videocon is "keen to participate" in India’s forthcoming spectrum auction. On Friday India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) confirmed that the upcomi ng sale of 800-MHz, 900-MHz and 1800-MHz frequencies will begin on 25 February.
Videocon is one of India’s smaller mobile operators, with a market share of just 0.67% at the end of November, according to new figures published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). It has mobile operations in Gujarat, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh, the regulator said, and a total of 6.2 million subscribers.
India as a whole was home to 937 million subscribers at the same date, an increase of 1.7 million on the previous month.
With subscriber growth rates slowing in India and smaller operators struggling to keep pace with the big guns, there has been talk of market consolidation for some time, but to date nothing has come to fruition.
Last year Bharti Airtel brokered a deal to acquire Mumbai-based Loop Mobile, but was unable to gain the regulatory green light to close the acquisition.
Loop’s operating licence expired on 28 November, but the TRAI’s new figures show that Loop still had just under 706,000 customers at the end of that month.
