Mukesh Ambani’s <\/a> Jio Platforms has agreed to sell its 1.34% stake to General Atlantic, the latest in a series of deals the top Indian telecom operator has secured in recent weeks.<\/p>\n On Sunday, New York-headquartered private equity firm General Atlantic <\/a> said it would invest $870 million in the Indian telecom operator, a subsidiary of India’s most valued firm (Reliance Industries), joining fellow American investors Facebook, <\/a> Silver Lake, and Vista Equity Partners that have also made sizeable bets on the three-and-a-half-year old Indian firm.<\/p>\n General Atlantic’s <\/a> investment values Jio Platforms at $65 billion — the same valuation implied by the Silver Lake and Vista deals<\/a> and a 12.5% premium over Facebook’s deal<\/a>, the Indian firm said.<\/p>\n Sunday’s announcement further illustrates the growing appeal of Jio Platforms, which has raised $8.85 billion in the past one month by selling about 14.7% of its stake, to foreign investors that are looking for a slice of the fast-growing world’s second largest internet market.<\/p>\n General Atlantic, <\/a> a high profile investor in consumer tech space that has invested in dozens of firms such as Airbnb, <\/a> Alibaba, Ant Financial, Box, ByteDance, <\/a> Facebook, Slack, Snapchat, <\/a> and Uber, has been a key investor in India for more than a decade though it has avoided bets in consumer tech space in the country.<\/p>\n It has cut checks to several Indian startups including NoBroker,<\/a> a Bangalore-based startup that helps those looking to rent or buy an apartment connect directly with property owners, edtech giants Unacademy<\/a> and Byju’s<\/a>, payments processor BillDesk, and National Stock Exchange of India. The PE firm, which has invested about $3 billion in India, said last week that it was looking to invest an additional $1.5 billion in Indian firms by next year — this time focusing on the players operating in consumer tech category.<\/p>\n Reliance Industries <\/a> chairman Ambani, who has poured more than $30 billion to build Jio Platforms, said the telecom network would “leverage General Atlantic’s proven global expertise and strategic insights across 40 years of technology investing.”<\/p>\n “General Atlantic shares our vision of a digital society for India and strongly believes in the transformative power of digitization in enriching the lives of 1.3 billion Indians,” he added.<\/p>\n Prepaid SIM cards of Reliance <\/a> Jio at a retail store. (Photo: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Launched in the second half of 2016, Reliance Jio <\/a> upended India’s telecommunications industry with cut-rate data plans and free voice calls. Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, operates the telecom venture, called Jio Infocomm, that has amassed 388 million subscribers since its launch to become the nation’s top telecom operator.<\/p>\n Reliance <\/a> Jio Platforms also owns a suite of services including music streaming service JioSaavn<\/a> (which it says it will take public), smartphones, broadband business, on-demand live television service and payments service.<\/p>\n “In just three and a half years, Jio has had a transformational impact in democratizing data and digital services, propelling India to be positioned as a leading global digital economy,” said Sandeep Naik, MD and Head of India & Southeast Asia at General Atlantic, in a statement.<\/p>\n The new capital would help Ambani, India’s richest man, further solidify his last year’s commitment to investors when he said he aimed to cut Reliance’s net debt of about $21 billion to zero by early 2021. Its core business — oil refining and petrochemicals — has been hard hit amid the coronavirus outbreak. Its net profit in the quarter that ended on March 31 fell by 37%.<\/p>\n In the company’s earnings call last month, Ambani said several firms had expressed interest in buying stakes in Jio Platforms in the wake of the deal with Facebook <\/a>. Bloomberg reported<\/a> last week that Saudi Wealth Fund was also in talks with Ambani for a stake in Jio Platforms.<\/p>\n Facebook <\/a> said that other than offering capital to Jio Platforms for a 9.99% stake in the firm, it would work with the Indian giant on a number of areas starting with e-commerce. Days later, JioMart, an e-commerce venture run by India’s most valued firm<\/a>, began testing an “ordering system” on WhatsApp<\/a>, the most popular smartphone app in India with over 400 million active users<\/a> in the country.<\/p>\n 29-year-old Akash Ambani, <\/a> the oldest son of Mukesh, said in a statement, “Jio is committed to make a digitally inclusive India that will provide immense opportunities to every Indian citizen especially to our highly talented youth.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tags:<\/b> Manish Singh<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms has agreed to sell its 1.34% stake to General Atlantic, the latest in a series of deals the top Indian telecom operator has secured in recent weeks. On Sunday, New York-headquartered private equity firm General Atlantic said it would invest $870 million in the Indian telecom operator, a subsidiary of India’s most valued firm … Continue reading General Atlantic to invest $870M in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms<\/span><\/a> Continue Reading ![\"Reliance](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/GettyImages-819407558.jpg\")
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