Vodafone has announced fresh investment of Rs 13,000 crore (£1.3 billion) for capacity augmentation and new business initiatives in India.
The investment will be used to set up a new data centre in the country and expanding its network to offer payment banks services. The company will also upgrade its existing telecom infrastructure .
Rs 8,000 crore (£800 million) will be used to enhance, upgrade and expand network coverage.
Rs 3,000 crore (£300 million) will be spent to further increase capacity and upgrade its high-end technology centre and IT and customer experience centres in Pune and Ahmedabad. These centres service Vodafone companies globally.
Rs 1,000 crore (£100 million) will be used for setting up a hi-tech Tier-4 data centre. This is the first of its kind in the Indian telecom sector.
Rs 1,000 crore (£100 million) will be invested in the payment bank for which Vodafone M-Pesa Ltd. has received an in-principle licence from the RBI.
This was committed to by Vittorio Colao, Vodafone Group Plc‘s CEO, in his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in London.
Since starting operations in India in 2007,Vodafone has already invested over Rs 1.11 lakh crore making it the largest FDI investor in the country. Vodafone operates telecom services across different countries but has called out India as its jewel in the crown.
"The planned capacity expansions and investments in the high-end technology centre and the customer service centres will create opportunities for employment and for skilling and training India’s rich talent pool. Vodafone will accordingly increase its staffing levels to 15,000 employees over the next two years," the company said in a statement.
Vodafone’s India business, in addition to being the highest contributor to Vodafone Group’s service revenue growth, has the largest customer base (188 million customers), is the largest data traffic market (by volume) and the third largest contributor to Vodafone Group’s service revenues.