Reliance Jio announces $870 million investment by General Atlantic
18 May 2020
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Reliance Industries Limited and Jio Platforms Limited, India’s leading digital services platform, on Sunday announced an investment of Rs6,598.38 crore ($870 million) by General Atlantic, valuing Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs5.16 lakh crore.
General Atlantic’s investment will translate into a 1.34 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis. With this investment, Jio Platforms has raised Rs67,194.75 crore from leading technology investors, including Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners and General Atlantic in less than four weeks, RIL stated in a release.
Jio Platforms, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, is a next-generation technology platform focused on providing high-quality and affordable digital services to more than 388 million subscribers across India.
With significant investments across digital ecosystem, including broadband connectivity, smart devices, cloud and edge computing, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, augmented and mixed reality and blockchain, Jio hopes to connect 1.3 billion people and businesses across the country, including small merchants, micro-businesses and farmers.
General Atlantic is a leading equity firm having invested in the technology, consumer, financial services and healthcare sectors, including Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Box, ByteDance, Facebook, Slack, Snapchat, Uber and other global technology leaders.
“General Atlantic shares our vision of a Digital Society for India and strongly believes in the transformative power of digitisation in enriching the lives of 1.3 billion Indians. We are excited to leverage General Atlantic’s proven global expertise and strategic insights across 40 years of technology investing for the benefit of Jio,” Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, said.
“As long-term backers of global technology leaders and visionary entrepreneurs, we could not be more excited about investing in Jio. We share Mukesh’s conviction that digital connectivity has the potential to significantly accelerate the Indian economy and drive growth across the country. General Atlantic has a long track record working alongside founders to scale disruptive businesses, as Jio is doing at the forefront of the digital revolution in India,” Bill Ford, chief executive officer of General Atlantic, said.
"We are delighted that a renowned global investor like General Atlantic is partnering with us in our journey to digitally empower India and Indians. Jio is committed to make a digitally inclusive India that will provide immense opportunities to every Indian citizen especially to our highly talented youth. General Atlantic's endorsement and partnership energises Jio’s young team to set, and achieve, even more ambitious goals in our onward march," Akash Ambani, director of Reliance Jio, said.
Jio Platforms Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, has built a worldclass all-IP data strong future proof network with latest 4G LTE technology (through its wholly owned subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited). It is the only network conceived and born as a Mobile Video Network from the ground up and supporting Voice over LTE technology. It is future ready and can be easily upgraded to support even more data, as technologies advance on to 5G, 6G and beyond.
