Vodafone Thought (Vi) has to pay a complete of Rs 10,000 crore in direction of debt within the subsequent yr. However the telco’s fundraising plans are not materialising as there isn’t any concrete assertion about the identical. Vi’s payable debt for September 30, 2024, stood at Rs 7,174 crore, in line with a regulatory submitting (first reported by BQ Prime). Then, the corporate just lately reclassified its debt of Rs 3,189 crore from non-current borrowings to present maturities of long-term debt. This quantity needs to be paid by March 31, 2024. As of September 30, 2023, the telco’s whole debt stood at Rs 2,12,784.6 crore.

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The Indian authorities is at the moment the most important stakeholder within the firm with over one-third of the corporate beneath its identify. Aditya Birla Group has promised the telco that it could possibly present as much as Rs 2,000 crore in funds “if obligatory”. As for the UK promoter Vodafone Group Plc, there isn’t any hope from there. Vodafone UK has carried ahead the funding of Vodafone Thought as nil on its books. The corporate has no hopes for its Indian enterprise.

Vi wants funds to pay its debt on time. The corporate’s internet loss for Q2 FY24 widened to Rs 8,737.9 crore and ARPU (common income per consumer) noticed a marginal progress to Rs 142. The working money flows for the corporate had been down 3% for the primary six months ending September 30, 2023. The way forward for Vodafone Thought will depend on whether or not the corporate can elevate funds within the close to future. In any other case, the debt mountain that Vi is beneath may probably crush the telco’s future.

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Lately, Kumar Mangalam Birla stated that Vodafone Thought’s workforce has labored diligently to construct a core community for the 5G rollout. However these phrases do not quantity to a lot if the telco’s fundraising would not occur. With out fundraising, Vi cannot launch its 5G community because the distributors aren’t going to supply credit score to the corporate.