By IANS,
New Delhi : India’s Bharti Airtel Wednesday said it will acquire 100 percent stake in the Telecom Seychelles for $62 million to expand its business in Africa.
“Telecom Seychelles has world-class operations that include state-of-the art 3G services. These operations will benefit further by leveraging the efficiencies of scale of our African operations,” said Bharti Airtel Chief Executive Officer (international) Manoj Kohli.
The acquisition of Telecom Seychelles will be the company’s second major deal in recent times after the acquisition of Zain Telecom’s African assets for $10.7 billion.
Bharti Airtel will thus expand its African footprint to 16 countries, taking its overall presence in 19 countries.
The company earlier had taken majority stake in Bangladesh’s Warid Telecom. It also has operations in Sri Lanka.
Telecom Seychelles, which began operations in 1998, has over 57 per cent share of the island’s mobile market. It offers 3G mobile and integrated wireline services across the country.