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| Vodafone's Sarin meets Manmohan Singh | | | New Delhi | Feb 16
Vodafone chief executive officer Arun Sarin met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here Friday to explain his group's plans in India after clinching the deal to buy a majority stake in Hutch-Essar mobile telecom company for $11.3 billion.
Sarin told the prime minister that his group intended to invest $2 billion in the Indian mobile telecom business over the next couple of years, especially in the country's rural areas, and make the service more affordable, officials said.
He later expressed hope that the Ruias of the Essar group will remain invested in the Hutch-Essar venture in which Vodafone is all set to acquire a 67-percent stake. The Ruias hold the remaining 33-percent interest in the company.
"The shareholders' agreement with the Essars would hopefully be signed soon," the Indian-born alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, told reporters after the 30-minute meeting with the prime minister.
Sarin, who visited Mumbai Thursday to meet with the Ruias, left for London later in the day. Officials said he would be back later next week to hold further talks with the Ruias on the plans for Hutch-Essar and also formally ink the buy-out deal.
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