Bharti

BSB and Yahoo! JAPAN announce partnership for Mobile Internet Portal

Partnership to tap immense growth opportunities in the Indian mobile market, which is on the cusp of a massive data led growth

New Delhi, June 19, 2012: Bharti Softbank (“BSB”), a 50:50 JV between Bharti Enterprises and SOFTBANK CORP., and Yahoo Japan Corporation, a consolidated SOFTBANK group company and the No. 1 internet portal in Japan, today announced a partnership for developing a mobile internet portal for the Indian mobile market. The Companies have formed a JV company BSY Pte. Ltd. for this purpose.

BSB was launched in October 2011 to focus on mobile internet in India. BSY Pte. Ltd is a step forward in this partnership and aims to combine Bharti’s deep understanding on the Indian market with SOFTBANK group’s rich experience in the internet portal space.

Mr. Kavin Bharti Mittal, Head of Strategy & New Product Development, BSB said, “We are delighted to partner Yahoo! JAPAN, who have a proven track record in this area.BSY, which is BSB’s second venture, will be an important piece in our strategy to drive the uptake of mobile internet and data services.”

Mr. Madhu Nori, who is the Head of Operations at BSB and will lead this venture in India, added, “As the Indian mobile market moves towards data led services, rich content is an area that will offer exciting growth prospects. Yahoo! JAPAN’s deep understanding of technology and analytics in this domain will be a big plus for this partnership, through which we aim to offer exciting content and services to customers in India. We are looking forward to working with all mobile operators and promote an open internet culture on mobile.”

Yahoo! JAPAN, which is the No. 1 internet portal in Japan with over 84% total internet users using it, has the largest user base on mobile in Japan driven by its mobile internet portal. The Company’s success has driven users graduating from simple VAS to using mobile phones to access open internet, which has seen SOFTBANK MOBILE clock data ARPU ratio of over 60%, the highest in the world.

Mr. Shin Murakami, Chief Mobile Officer of Yahoo! JAPAN said, “Japan’s mobile industry has set several global benchmarks in terms of technology and services and Yahoo! JAPAN has led the growth of mobile-internet business as part of the SOFTBANK group. We are extremely excited about the partnership with BSB for the Indian market, where the coming years will see explosive growth of data usage on mobile. Through this partnership we hope to contribute to enhance people’s lives through mobile internet.”

India is the world’s second largest mobile market in the world with over 900 million subscribers. A vast youth population and a fast growing economy is expected to drive data usage on mobile with the proliferation of 3G and 4G services. According to the GSMA, India will become the second largest Mobile Broadband market globally within the next four years with 367 million Mobile Broadband connections by 2016.