New Delhi: Indian Telecom giant Bharti Airtel has acquired a strategic stake in AqillIz – a Blockchain as a Service Company under the telco’s Startup Accelerator Programme.
Headquartered in Singapore, Aqilliz is founded by former WPP global client lead and GroupM global blockchain solutions lead, Gowthaman Ragothaman.
Through the acquisition, Airtel is planning to make use of Aqilliz’s advanced blockchain technologies to scale across its ad tech (Airtel Ads), digital entertainment (Wynk Music and Airtel Xstream) and digital marketplace (Airtel Thanks App) offerings.
“Alongside financial backing, networking, and mentorship, Aqilliz will be able to benefit from Airtel’s online and offline distribution network, while allowing us to deploy our MAdtech offerings at scale to the conglomerate’s over 340 million retail customers and over 1 million business partners,” read an official statement from.
Ragothaman was CEO of Mindshare SEA from 2012 to 2013. At Mindshare he has also held roles like Chief Operating Officer, Global Chief Strategy Officer.