The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Thursday approved Google’s proposed acquisition of a minority stake in telecom major Bharti Airtel.

The deal has been cleared on the basis of modifications offered by the acquirer (Google), according to an official statement put out by CCI, which, however, did not detail the modifications at the moment.

Pointing out that the proposed deal has been approved after changes, CCI said, “The Acquirer  (Google) and Target (Airtel) have executed an Investment Agreement (IA) per which the Acquirer proposes to acquire a minority and non-controlling stake of 1.28 percent of equity share capital in the Target. Along with the IA, the Acquirer and the Target through their affiliates have also entered into certain commercial deals. The Parties also intend to enter into certain other commercial arrangements in future.”

In January earlier this year, Airtel had announced that Google proposed to invest up to $1 billion in a partnership with the company as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund. The deal includes investment of $700M to acquire 1.28 percent ownership in Airtel and up to $300M toward potential multi-year commercial agreements.

According to a PTI report, deals beyond a certain threshold require approval from the regulator, which keeps a tab on unfair business practices in the marketplace. Google International LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google LLC. The latter is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, helmed by India-born chief executive Sundar Pichai.

Incidentally, Google paid  Rs. 33,737 crore in 2020 to Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) digital subsidiary, Jio Platforms Ltd,  for a 7.73 percent equity stake. Jio Platforms is the holding company for India’s largest telco, Jio Infocomm, which is a rival of Bharti Airtel and VodafoneIdea.

Meanwhile, the Airtel-Google partnership, according to a statement from the telco in January,  would focus on enabling affordable access to smartphones across price ranges, and will continue to explore building on their existing partnerships to potentially co-create India-specific network domain use cases for 5G and other standards, and help accelerate the cloud ecosystem for businesses across India

As a part of its first commercial agreement, it was announced, Airtel and Google will work together to build on Airtel’s extensive offerings that covers a range of Android-enabled devices to consumers via innovative affordability programs. Together, the companies will continue to explore further opportunities to bring down the barriers of owning a smartphone across a range of price points, in partnership with various device manufacturers.