Silver Lake Investing $747 Million In Jio

By Amit Chowdhry • May 4, 2020
  • Reliance Industries Limited (NSE:RELIANCE) will be receiving another major cash injection. Silver Lake is investing $747 million into Jio.

Reliance Industries Limited (NSE:RELIANCE) will be receiving another major cash injection several weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion into the company. Private equity firm Silver Lake is investing 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about $746.8 million) into telecommunications company Jio Platforms (a subsidiary of Reliance) at a valuation of $65 billion.

Jio Platforms launched its commercial operations in 2016 and disrupted the industry by offering 4G data and voice calls for six months without a charge. Now Jio Platforms has 388 million subscribers.

“Jio Platforms is 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, and we are honored and pleased to have been invited to partner with Mukesh Ambani and the team at Reliance and Jio to help further the Jio mission,” said Egon Durban, co-chief executive and managing partner at Silver Lake.

Silver Lake — which is based in Menlo Park, California — has about $40 billion in combined assets under management.

“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,” added Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries.