The Bharti group is likely to offload its controlling stake in Telecom Seychelles, a joint venture between Seejay Cellular, Mauritius, that offers cellular and fixed line services in Seychelles.
The move is aimed at strengthening its presence in the domestic market. Bharti has already decided against investing for expanding businesses in the overseas markets in the next four-five years.
"Though our board has not yet taken any official decision on this, we are open to divesting the stake in the Seychelles venture. However, Bharti is yet to initiate any talks with its existing partners in Telecom Seychelles," Akhil Gupta, chief financial officer of Bharti Televentures told Business Standard.
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"The overseas venture is doing extremely well and is well ahead of other cable and wireless operators in terms of subscriber-base in that country. Though it is making profits, we do not want to commit additional funds for its expansion. The priority of the venture was to showcase the convergence of cellular and fixed line operation," Gupta added.
Apart from mobile services and basic telephony services, Telecom Seychelles is also running an international gateway.
Bharti Global is the holding company for the group's overseas telecom services operations. Bharti Global's strategic partner Seejay Cellular is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Currimjee Jewanjee & Co, a leading business group in Mauritius.
Seejay Cellular presently holds around 46 per cent stake in Indian Ocean Telecom, a company incorporated in Seychelles for the purpose of investing in Telecom Seychelles. Seejay's associate company EmTel is one of the largest cellular firms in Mauritius.
Bharti's cellular venture in Seychelles is the first mobile service provider set up by any Indian company outside India. Bharti was awarded the license to operate the service in 1997 and launched the operations in 1998 in Seychelles.
Following the successful bid for Seychelles, Bharti has bid for a licence in Nepal, but failed to bag it. Recently a VSNL-MTNL-TCIL consortium started operations in Nepal in association with a domestic company there.