Indian law firm J Sagar Associates (JSA) has acted for Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) on its $1.6 billion sale of a 3.3% stake in Indian telecommunication service company Bharti Airtel to its parent company, Bharti Telecom. Bharti Airtel was represented by its in-house team.

Bharti Airtel competes with telecommunications companies such as Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio in the cutthroat telecoms market in India and is currently in the race to spearhead the next generation 5G rollout in the country, Reuters reported.

Airtel has been raising money to fund its digital ambitions, including developing home broadband, data centres, cloud adoption as it prepares to launch its next generation 5G services in the country. Meanwhile, Singtel may use proceeds from the sale to reduce the group's debt and fund 5G capital expenditures and growth initiatives, Reuters added.

The JSA team was led by partners Vikram Raghani and Anand Lakra.