Aditya Birla group company, Idea Cellular Ltd today sold, 16% of its stake at $400 Million to Providence. This deal values Idea Cellular Limited at $2.5 Billion. Earlier this year in April, Tata’s exited Idea Cellular when the company was valued at $2.0 Billion. In July, Idea Celular announced that it would invest $400 million or Rs2,500 crores to expand in various circles in India to get a PAN India footprint.
Finally, in October, they have raised the money required for expansion. Idea has a 10.87% market share amongst GSM service providers.
At the end of October-2007, India’s wireless subscriber base stood at 213 mn. Here is the Operator wise market share. Bharti Airtel has gained at the cost of Reliance Communications. Rcom’s market share dropped from 20.6% in June-06 to 17.8%. Vodafone India and Idea Cellular increased their market share at the cost of BSNL.
Bharti Airtel had 50.91 mn subscribers followed by Reliance Communications at 37.83 mn. Vodafone India is fighting hard to unseat Rcom and has 37.19 mn subscribers followed by BSNL at 31.03 mn subscribers. Tata Indicom Mobile has 20.42 mn subscribers, Idea Cellular has 19.42 mn and Aircel has 8.52 mn subscribers.
