Aditya Birla Group (ABG) chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla on Thursday said Vodafone Idea (Vi) is a national asset and its successful ₹18,000 crore follow-on public offer (FPO) sets the stage for the cash-strapped telcos financial turnaround and start of Vi 2.0.
“The only position which Vodafone Group has taken and that is because of their own shareholders who have said that please ringfence the Indian operations with Indian assets. So, their source of funding is limited to their stake in Indus and generally if one has to look at monetization of Indus, then they would want Indus to get to its fair value. It has actually re-rated quite a lot.”
Vodafone Idea was formed by the merger of Aditya Birla Groups Idea Cellular and the India unit of Vodafone Plc in 2018. The board also approved an increase in authorised share capital to Rs 1 lakh crore from Rs 75,000 crore.
Sethi said Vodafone Idea sees “great opportunity” with the latest generation technology to make factories smarter by deploying private networks which will pave the way for wide-ranging applications such as workers’ safety in hazardous environments, and Industry 4.0 or modernisation of the industry spaces.
Vodafone Idea: Vi, like peers Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, has been bullish about the growth of its Internet of Things business. Vi says it is the first telco to have an end-to-end integrated IoT offering comprising connectivity, hardware, network, application, analytics, security, and support.