India’s Reliance Jio Platforms to sell $1.5b stake to Saudi Inc

NEW DELHI: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani has found yet another high-profile firm to write a massive check to his telecom venture Reliance Jio Platforms at the height of a global pandemic, foreign media reported.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, said on Thursday it will invest $1.5 billion in Jio Platforms for a 2.32% stake in the top Indian telecom operator.

With this deal, Jio Platforms, which is India’s largest telecom operator with more than 388 million subscribers, has secured $15.2 billion from 10 investors, including social giant Facebook, in the past nine weeks by selling a 24.7% stake in its business.

For some comparison, India’s startup ecosystem raised $14.5 billion last year — in what was its best year.Today’s announcement further illustrates the opportunities foreign investors see in Jio Platforms, a three-and-a-half-year-old subsidiary of Reliance Industries (India’s most valuable firm) that has upended the telecommunications market in India with cut-rate voice calls and mobile data tariffs.

Analysts at Bernstein said this week they expect Jio Platforms to reach 500 million customers by 2023, and control half of the market by 2025. Jio Platforms competes with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, a joint venture between British giant Vodafone and Indian tycoon Kumar Mangalam Birla’s Aditya Birla Group

In a statement, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of PIF, said, “We are delighted to be investing in an innovative business which is at the forefront of the transformation of the technology sector in India.