Kuwaiti family conglomerate Kharafi Group has invited shareholders in telecoms firm Zain to sell their shares as part of a consortium, as it works to gather a 46 percent stake to sell to foreign investors.

Shareholders who own no more than 300,000 shares in Zain, as of September 6, can enter the selling consortium led by Al-Khair National for Stocks and Real Estate Co, a firm owned by Kharafi, according to an advertisement in local papers on Wednesday.

'We hope that these procedures would reflect how keen the head of Al-Khair Group is to achieve and protect the interests of small investors and give them priority,' National Investments Co, another Kharafi-owned firm who is handling the sale, said in the advertisement.

Kharafi's Al-Khair is the second-largest shareholder in Zain with a 11.283 percent stake, according to bourse data, but analysts estimate Kharafi's stake to be around 20 percent through other units.

State-run Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the country's sovereign wealth fund, owns a 24.61 percent stake.

Last week, Kharafi said a consortium of Indian telecom companies and a Malaysian investor would buy a 46 percent stake in the Arab world's third-largest telecom company in a deal valuing the stake at about $13.7 billion, making it one of the biggest foreign acquisitions in the Gulf region.

The buying consortium is made up of India's little-known Vavasi Group, regional telecom companies Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, and Malaysian billionaire Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, said Kharafi.

Just a day after the deal was announced, however, both state-run Indian firms said they had not decided on whether to join the consortium, raising doubt that the deal would actually go through. - Reuters