Jio Platforms, the Mukesh ambani-owned digital unit, is in red hot form in attracting big-ticket investments.
Barely days after Facebook's sizeable Rs 43,574 crore deal, Silver Lake, one of the world's largest tech investors, on Monday decided to invest Rs 5,655.75 crore to buy a 1.15 per cent stake in Jio Platforms.
The investment in Jio Platforms is at a 12.5 per cent premium to the Facebook deal and company sources have been quoted saying that more such strategic and financial investments are likely to be made going ahead.
According to a Reliance Industries (Jio Platforms is a subsidiary of it) press statement, the latest 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 a 12.5 per cent premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment announced on April 22, 2020."
Facebook had bought a 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for $ 5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) at an enterprise value of Rs 4.62 lakh crore.
Huge market potential
Strategic and financial investors are to form 20 per cent of Jio Platform, half of which was picked by Facebook. Silver Lake is one of the investors and more such investments are likely.
Jio Platforms is focused on building a digital society for India by bringing together Jio's leading digital apps, digital ecosystems and its high speed connectivity platform under one umbrella.
With approximately $ 40 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital, Silver Lake is the global leader in large-scale technology investing. Its investments have included Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Alphabet's Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies, Twitter and numerous other global technology leaders.
Commenting on the transaction with Silver Lake, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd, said, "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."
Egon Durban, Silver Lake Co-CEO and Managing Partner, said, "Jio Platforms has 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 it is addressing is enormous".
