After Facebook, now Silver Lake to invest Rs 5,656 cr in Jio Platforms

The investment in Jio Platforms is at a 12.5 per cent premium to the Facebook deal and more such strategic and financial investments are likely to be made going ahead.

By: ENS Economic Bureau

New Delhi | Updated: May 5, 2020 12:31 AM IST

2 min read

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. (File photo, source: Reuters)

US-based technology investor Silver Lake has proposed to invest Rs 5,655.75 crore in Jio Platforms, the subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd.

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 a 12.5 per cent premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment announced on April 22, 2020, RIL said.

On April 22, Facebook had agreed to buy a 9.99 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 43,574 crore, with an eye on the country’s 6 crore small businesses and a huge digital customer base of 1.3 billion users.

With approximately $40 billion in combined assets under management and focus tech and tech-enabled opportunities, Silver Lake is a leading player in large-scale technology investing. “Its mission is to build and grow great companies by partnering with world-class management teams. Its investments have included Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies, Twitter and numerous other global technology leaders,” RIL said.

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 … We are excited to leverage insights from their global technology relationships for the Indian Digital Society’s transformation.”

Reliance Jio Infocomm, which provides connectivity platform to over 388 million subscribers, will continue to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms. Egon Durban, Silver Lake co-CEO and managing partner, said, “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.”

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