Bharti Airtel will acquire 100 % of Telecom Seychelles Limited, the incumbent operator of Seychelles, for US$62 million. Seychelles is an island nation in the Indian Ocean with an estimated population of 84,000.
Telecom Seychelles began operations in 1998 by launching mobile services. Today, it offers 3G mobile and integrated wireline services across the island nation under the Airtel brand and has over 57% share of the mobile market. The operator also has a wireline core network supplied by Ericsson and it offers ISDN/DSL along with digital / IP PABX connectivity.
With this acquisition, Bharti Airtel will expand its African footprint to 16 countries and its overall presence to 19 countries.
Mr. Manoj Kohli, CEO (International) & Jt. MD, Bharti Airtel, said, “We are delighted at the addition of Seychelles to our Africa portfolio. 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.”http://www.bharti.com
- In June 2010, India’s Bharti Airtel completed its previously announced acquisition of Zain’s mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa for an enterprise valuation of US$10.7 billion.
The acquisition positions Airtel as one of the world’s top five mobile operators with 180 million customers, operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa. It’s network footprint covers over 1.8 billion people. The company will have combined revenues of over US$12.4 billion and EBITDA of over US$ 4.7 billion, based on the last audited results.
Bharti’s acquisition of Zain’s African mobile services operations covers 15 countries with a total customer base of over 42 million. The total population base covered is over 450 million with telecom penetration of approximately 32%. The countries in which Bharti has acquired the operations are – Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Zain is the market leader in 10 of the 15 countries and second in 4 countries.
