Jio Platforms gets ₹5,655 crore investment from PE giant Silver Lake

NEW DELHI : Days after announcing a ₹43,574 crore deal with Facebook, Reliance Industries today announced that private equity firm Silver Lake will invest ₹ 5,655.75 crore into Jio Platforms for 1.15% stake. This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of ₹ 4.90 lakh crore and an enterprise value of ₹ 5.15 lakh crore.

The Silver Lake deal represents a 12.5% premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment into Jio Platforms, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL).

Silver Lake’s other investments have included Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies, Twitter and numerous other global technology leaders.

After selling a 10% stake to Facebook, Reliance had last week said it was in talks with other strategic and financial investors for a similar-sized deal to cut down debt.

RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani 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,” he said.

Silver Lake co-CEO and managing partner Egon Durban described Jio Platforms as 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,” he said.

The deal is subject to regulatory and other customary approvals.