Vodafone India, the country's second largest telecom operator with 200 million users, said that it has received an equity infusion of Rs 47,700 crore from its parent company, Vodafone Group, in the first half of the current fiscal.
The carrier claimed that the equity infusion via foreign direct investment (FDI) is largest ever FDI infusion in the country.
"This equity infusion of Rs 47,700 crore, which we believe is the largest ever in India, will enable Vodafone India to continue its investments in spectrum and expansion of networks across various technology layers," Sunil Sood, MD & CEO, Vodafone India, said in a statement.
Vodafone India has 22.5% revenue market share with over half of the customers- 107 million- coming from rural India.
"We have successfully increased our revenue market share by 0.6% in the first quarter of current fiscal. experience to our hundreds of million customers," he said.
Sood said that Vodafone is building one of the most modern and scalable telecom networks to deliver connectivity for both voice and data and to support technologies.
The move coincides with Reliance Jio’s entry, which is expected to shake up the dynamics in the market. Further, the development comes at a time when the telco prepares for the upcoming spectrym auction, where is likely to bid aggressively to increase its 4G spectrum holdings.
Vodafone, which has a total 302MHz spectrum, may spend as much as $2 billion on acquiring spectrum. It has 4G spectrum in nine of the country's 22 circles, and lags behind Jio and market leader Bharti Airtel's pan-India holdings.
