BENGALURU: India's wealthiest man, Mukesh Ambani, may be successful in listing his four-year-old tech commerce-telecom venture, Jio in foreign exchanges, all thanks to $12.5 billion (Rs 92,202 crore) funding raised in just over one and a half months.
The period has seen the company make stake sales to a posse of leading tech companies and private equity ventures such as Facebook and Abu Dhabhi-based investment firm Mubadala. Soon after Mubadala’s announcement that it was investing $1.2 billion in Jio, earlier investor American PE giant Silver Lake has said that it will invest another `4,546 crore in the digital platform for a further 0.93 per cent stake.
Silver Lake has a combined stake of 2.08 per cent in Jio now. The boutique of investments will not only reduce Jio’s net debt burden, but also bring it closer to attracting further investment if it is listed. Analysts expect Jio to go for an initial public offering (IPO) sometime next year.
“The second round of investment by Silver Lakes particularly points towards its ambitions of a global IPO, especially when we look at the kind of success the PE group had with Alibaba in 2014. More importantly, it brings Jio deep technology understanding of incumbents and new age industries like e-commerce and the sharing economy,” Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO and Founder of Greyhound Research wrote in his note.
With US-China tensions showing no signs of abating, Jio may pose an interesting alternative to US investors. However, the challenges the pandemic poses to the Indian economy, Jio may yet have much to prove to Wall Street.