NEW DELHI: A number of investors, including Switzerland-based Partners Group AG, Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and KKR, have bought internet service provider Excitel Broadband Pvt Ltd in a $200 million stock deal. Signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with the potential to invest. said two people familiar with the development.
In an effort to fund growth, 15 potential buyers, including Macquarie Group, Apax Partners and Actis LLP, have signed NDAs for an equity raising process to be conducted by Avendus Capital. The next stage involves submitting a non-binding offer (NBO). The shortlisted bidders then proceed to the next stage of submitting a binding offer.
“This process has recently started. There is a lot of interest from fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) providers,” one of the two people quoted above said on condition of anonymity. spoke.
Founded in 2015, Excitel has 1 million subscribers across 55 cities including Hyderabad, New Delhi, Bangalore, Khammam, Vijayawada, Lucknow and Kanpur.
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Investors targeting Exitel shares reflect growing interest in FTTH as India’s $3 billion wireline internet market is expected to grow rapidly. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), India has 941.47 million broadband users, of which wireline subscribers account for 44.66 million.
Spokespeople for Partners Group, Actis and Apax Partners declined to comment. Vivek Raina, CEO and co-founder of Excitel Broadband, also declined to comment.
“As per our policy, we do not comment on stories of this nature,” an Avendus Capital spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Spokespeople for Brookfield, KKR and Macquarie Group did not respond to email inquiries by press time on Tuesday.
excitement and rivalry
Reliance Jio Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Excitel, Hathway Cable & Datacom Ltd, Alliance Broadband Services Pvt are prominent players in user experience in India’s top cities, according to a January report by mobile network analysis firm Opensignal .
According to the report, Airtel leads in terms of speed in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, Hathaway has the edge in Bengaluru and it shares the top spot with ACT in Chennai. Excitel is said to be outstanding in Delhi and Hyderabad for both download and upload speeds.
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In Delhi, Excitel offers users an average download speed of 77.2Mbps, leading Airtel by 25Mbps (50.4%) and Jio by 33.9Mbps (78.1%), the report said. Similarly, Excitel came out on top with an average broadband upload speed of 54.7 Mbps, about 15.9 Mbps (41.1%) better than Airtel in second place.
According to Opensignal’s report, Excitel boasts the highest download (71.5Mbps) and upload (53.6Mbps) speeds in Hyderabad. “Excitel outperformed second-place Hathway by 18.2% in download speed and 14.8% in upload speed.”
