India’s leading telecom firm, Bharti Airtel has acquired additional 20.6% stake in the SD-WAN startup, Lavelle Networks. With this, Bharti Airtel’s total ownership will increase to 45.6% in the SD-WAN startup.
THe company will acquire an additional 20.6% stake in Lavelle Networks in multiple tranches.
“In furtherance to the earlier communication dated January 31, 2022 and in terms of terms of Regulation 30 of the SEBI Listing Regulations, we wish to inform you that the Company has entered into an agreement resulting in the acquisition of aggregate 45.6% stake in Lavelle Networks Private Limited, in which the Company currently holds 25% stake,” the company said in its stock filing.
Airtel has made this acquisition of stakes under its Startup Accelerator Program, for the support of early stage Indian tech startups. Bharti Airtel share price closed 0.68% higher at ₹891.90 per share on BSE on Tuesday.
About Lavelle Networks
Lavelle Networks was founded in 2015, and is a network software startup working in the field of cloud powered technology. The company provides solution for the optimisation, security and management of enterprise branch networks.
The company’s flagship scaleAon-SD-WAN platform has connected several thousands of Indian enterprises from the nation’s largest financial institutions to e-commerce networks. Its product line was launched in 2016-17 and accelerated to a significant market share within the last three years in the early adopters of SD-WAN technology in India.
Bharti Airtel had acquired initial 25% stakes in the Bengaluru-based tech startup in February last year. Other than this, ASM Technologies, a global technology engineering and product development services provider, had also done a follow on investment in Lavelle Networks.
Bharti Airtel expected to show decent growth in Q1 FY24
In the first quarter of current financial year, Indian telecom firms are expected to record modest growth in the first quarter of FY24. The stable growth will be led by tariffs and the assumption of further improvement in subscriber mix. EBITDA is also expected to pick up at a single-digit growth level. Bharti Airtel along with Reliance Jio are expected to perform well in the first quarter of the current financial year. Giants like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are well-placed for a healthy quarter with sales seen to rise by double-digit year-on-year. Kunal Vora of BNP Paribas expects Bharti and Jio to report double-digit sales growth YoY owing to market share gains.
Kunal Vora – Head India Equity Research, BNP Paribas in his report said, “With stable tariffs for over a year now, we expect the Indian telecom industry revenue growth to moderate to 8- 9% y-y in 1QFY24, assuming an improving subscriber mix as more customers adopt 4G services.”
