Vodafone Idea is in advanced negotiations with three to four private equity funds for raising about Rs 20,000 crore, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officials were told in a recent meeting with Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, Business Standard reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a meeting with Birla who is one of the promoters of VIL and is spearheading the fundraise. We were told that negotiations are on with 3-4 private equity funds to raise money,\u201d a telecom department official was quoted as saying in the report. The official added that no timeline has been discussed yet, adding that there are expectations that the telco will be able to \u201cturn around\u201d.<\/p>\n
Vi\u2019s efforts to raise Rs 20,000 crore through a mix of debt and equity have not materialised even after a year.<\/p>\n
Vi requires a fresh capital infusion from its promoters as that is expected to lead to third-party equity funding. Such a scenario would also trigger the much-needed investments in Vi\u2019s 4G network and towards its pending 5G rollout. But that hasn\u2019t happened yet, which has resulted in lenders delaying refinancing of part of its existing bank debt. Vi ended the march quarter, FY23, with Rs 2.09 lakh crore net debt and a modest cash balance of Rs 230 crore.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s promoters have been widely expected to infuse around Rs 5,000 crore of fresh capital in tranches after the government converted the telco\u2019s accrued interest towards AGR arrears into equity in February this year and became its biggest shareholder with a 33.1% stake.<\/p>\n
The telecom JV between UK\u2019s Vodafone Plc and India\u2019s Aditya Birla Group said in annual report for FY23 that it continues to actively engage with lenders and investors for further fundraising.<\/p>\n
The telco is also in advanced discussions with various telecom equipment vendors for finalising its much-awaited 5G rollout strategy and it has concluded device testing of all major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on its fifth-generation network, as per the annual rpeort.<\/p>\n
Vodafone Idea\u2019s chairman Ravinder Takka has reiterated that the telco remains committed to ramping up 4G coverage and launching 5G. \u201cThe company will continue to make investments for expanding 4G coverage and capacity, especially in its 17 priority circles and introduce 5G services once funding is in place,\u201d Takkar said in Vi\u2019s latest annual report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vodafone Idea is in advanced negotiations with three to four private equity funds for raising about Rs 20,000 crore, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officials were told in a recent meeting with Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, Business Standard reported. \u201cWe had a meeting with Birla who is one of the promoters of VIL and is spearheading the fundraise. We were told that negotiations are on with 3-4 private equity funds to raise money,\u201d a telecom department official was quoted as saying in the report. The official added that no timeline has been discussed yet, adding that there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}