BENGALURU: Days after the Facebook-Reliance Jio deal, American tech investment giant Silver Lake has said that it will invest Rs 5,655.75 crore (nearly $0.75 billion) in various Jio platforms to hold 1.15 per cent stake, which values RIL’s tech business at Rs 4.62 lakh crore ($65.95 billion).
The Mukesh Ambani-led oil-technology-commerce conglomerate has accelerated its tech-enabled Jio and New Commerce offerings, and is reportedly in talks with various global investors who have shown interest to sign a Facebook-Jio kind of deal, which will also help Reliance reduce its debt, especially in a stressed, pandemic environment.
“This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.90 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.15 lakh crore and represents 12.5 per cent premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment announced on April 22, 2020,” RIL said in a statement. The company had earlier announced India’s biggest Rs 53,215 crore rights issue to reposition itself as technology-consumer company at a time when its energy business has been succumbing to the global oil price drop due to the Covid-19 lockdowns.
RIL said that in the wake of economic disruptions caused by the pandemic globally, the partnership with a global tech-investor like Silver Lake assumes greater significance. The private equity giant has $40 billion in combined assets in major technological companies across the world, such as Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies and Twitter.
“Silver Lake has an outstanding record of being a valuable partner for leading technology companies globally. Silver Lake is one of the most respected voices in technology and finance. We are excited to leverage insights from their global technology relationships for the Indian Digital Society’s transformation,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, RIL.