Jio Platforms Nears INR 1 Trillion Investment With Silver Lakes Pumping Additional INR 4,546.80 cr With this seventh deal in less than six weeks, Jio Platforms has raised INR 92,202.15 cr from 6 global technology investors
By Shipra Singh
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US private equity firm Silver Lakes, along with its co-investors on 5 May announced an additional investment of INR 4,546.80 cr in Jio Platforms one month after it declared to pump INR 5,655.75 cr in the digital services platform.
After the latest deal, the aggregate investment by Silver Lake and its co-investors in Jio Platforms, a unit of Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Industries (RIL) stands at INR 10,202.55 cr.
"I would like to emphasise that Silver Lake's additional investment in Jio Platforms, within a span of five weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic, is a strong endorsement of the intrinsic resilience of the Indian economy, which will surely grow bigger with comprehensive digital enablement," RIL Chairman Ambani said in a company statement.
The PE firm's investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of INR 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of INR 5.16 lakh crore, and will translate into a 2.08 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis, said the company statement.
Silver Lake is one of the world's largest technology investors with investment holdings in companies such as Alibaba, Airbnb, Dell, Alphabet's Verily, Ant Financial and Twitter, among others. The PE firm has approximately $40 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital with a team of approximately 100 investment and operating professionals located around the world.
Commenting on the additional capital, Egon Durban, Co-CEO and Managing Partner, Silver Lake said, "We are excited to increase our exposure and bring more of our co-investors into this opportunity, further supporting Jio Platforms in its mission to bring the power of high-quality and affordable digital services to a mass consumer and small businesses population. The investment momentum behind Jio validates a compelling business model and underscores our admiration for Mukesh Ambani, his team and their courageous vision in creating and building one of the world's most remarkable technology companies."
Abu Dhabi based investor Mubadala also announced funding of INR 9,093.60 cr in Jio Platforms on 5 May. So far, six global technology investors—Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista, General Atlantic, KKR and Mubadala—have announced aggregate investments worth INR 92,202.15 cr into the RIL owned unit. Amongst these, social media giant Facebook has declared largest investment of INR 43,574 crore ($5.7 bn).
The additional deal with Silver Lakes inches RIL a step closer to its plan of cuting its debt of INR 1.53 trillion and become net debt free by March 2021. Late in April, RIL had stated that it will achieve the zero net debt status ahead of schedule as it is confident about completing the capital raising programme totaling over INR 1.04 lakh crore by Q1 of the current financial year. After today's deal, RIL is short of about INR 11,790 cr of this target.
