Vodafone has sold its minority stake in India’s Bharti Airtel in order to comply with local cross-ownership rules.
The U.K. operator sold an indirect stake of around 4.2% in Bharti Airtel to Bharti Enterprises for US$200 million (€182 million), the Economic Times reported on Friday.
The sale is linked with the introduction of the new unified licensing regime in India, which prevents companies holding stakes in more than one operator in the same service area, the paper said.
Vodafone acquired a 10% stake in Bharti Airtel – then known as Bharti Tele-Ventures – in 2005, paying 65 billion rupees (€1.2 billion at the exchange rate of the time). It sold more than half of it back to Bharti two years later in the wake of its acquisition of Hutchison Essar, now Vodafone India.
Bharti continues to be some way ahead of Vodafone in India’s mobile market.
The market leader had 226 million customers and a 23% share of the market at the end of March, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Vodafone’s 184 million subscribers gave it a 19% share.
India had 969.89 million mobile customers at the end of calendar Q1.
