After a \"classic merger\" without a single pink slip to hand over and a restructuring deal with Vodafone Idea<\/a> (Vi), the worst is over for Indus Towers<\/a>, among the world's largest telecom infrastructure companies, which is now looking to leverage the upcoming 5G rollouts and also explore diverse revenue options, chief executive Bimal Dayal<\/a> said.
Speaking to ET, Dayal said that all the private and publicly owned telcos are talking about 5G, and they are also catching up with each other in different circles.
\"With the technology uplift that will take place with 5G...What better time than this to easily say we have a good amount of tailwinds happening,\" the Indus top executive said in his first interview since taking over as the CEO of a merged Bharti Infratel-Indus<\/a> entity.
\"There is a lot of catching up which operators have to do over the other. If you have an X operator who is leading in Y circle, you have two or three operators who are doing the trailing and catching up... that obviously provides growth to us as well.\"
Indus Towers<\/a> improved its receivables position in the March quarter as a result of restructuring the security package received from Vodafone earlier this year, Dayal said.
\"From Vi's perspective, they have been living up to their commitments within their security package restructuring... And it was restructured in such a way that it came as part of the equity into Vi... an odd Rs 3,400 crore we received as part of that,\" said Dayal.
Under the restructuring package, Vi needs to make regular payments, else Indus can draw on the Rs 440 crore residual amount from Vodafone Group<\/a>'s stake sale in the tower company, which netted the UK major over Rs 3,800 crore.
Vodafone Group has previously said it has the option to contribute the residual proceeds to Vi before July 15.
\"Any residual proceeds that are not contributed to Vi will be available to Indus until 19 November 2022 to guarantee Vi's obligations under the master service agreement.\"
Vodafone Idea has been \"fulfilling those commitments... This arrangement is up till July 15, and we will see what happens after that,\" Dayal said. \"We are encouraged by the discussions which have been taking place on the Vi front, and on their funding.\"
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