Updated at June 6, 2020:
Silver Lake has made another investment of Rs 4,546.8 crore in Jio Platforms. It’s in addition to the earlier investment of Rs 5,655.75 crore. Thus the private equity firm will have around 2.08 per cent equity stake in the digital assets company. This deal now brings the private equity firm close to the recently concluded investment deal from Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Company.
With this investment, Jio Platforms now has raised a total of around Rs 92,202.15 crore. This would translate to roughly 19.9 per cent stake of the company.
Our original story from Saturday, June 6, 2020, follows:
Just weeks after the Facebook mega-investment of $45.7 billion in Jio Platform, the Indian telco arm of Reliance Industries Limited, another American investor is taking the same route.
Private equity firm Silver Lake has announced an investment of Rs 5,655.75 crore (about $746.8 million) in Jio Platforms. This would give the private equity firm a 1.15 per cent stake in the Indian telecom network. The investment further increases the equity value of Jio Platforms to Rs 4.90 lakh crore ($65 billion). That’s a 12.5 per cent premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment.
Silver Lake, a Menlo Park-headquartered private equity firm has approximately $40 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital. It has already put money on some of the large-scale technology companies. This includes Airbnb, Alibaba’s Ant Financial, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies. Twitter and video game engine maker Unity.
“Jio Platforms is one of the world’s most remarkable companies, led by an incredibly strong and entrepreneurial management team who are driving and actualizing a courageous vision. They have brought extraordinary engineering capabilities to bear on bringing the power of low-cost digital services to a mass consumer and small businesses population. The market potential they are addressing is enormous, and we are honoured and pleased to have been invited to partner with Mukesh Ambani and the team at Reliance and Jio to help further the Jio mission,” said Egon Durban, co-CEO and managing partner at Silver Lake, in a statement.
In the last three-and-a-half-year Reliance Jio has disrupted the entire digital ecosystem of India. With cheap data plans, the telco has gathered more than 388 million subscribers, thus wearing the crown of top telecom operator in India. The telco has built its world-class eco-system with services like JioTV (live tv streaming), JioSaavn (music streaming), JioPay (payment service), JioFibre broadband, LYF smartphones and smart devices. The best part here is that the telco has been offering these devices, applications, content and services at affordable tariffs as part of Jio Digital Life.
“I am delighted to welcome Silver Lake as a valued partner in continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. 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, Reliance Industries Ltd, in a statement.