Silver Lake invests $747 + $600 million in Reliance Jio Platforms (Updated)

Just a few weeks after the big investment of $5.7 billion by Facebook for 9.99%. Silver Lake another investment firm from the United States will be investing about $746.8 million (Rs. 5,655.75 crore) in Jio Platforms to gain a 1.15% stake in the largest telecom network of the country with over 388 million users.

Update: Silver Lake announced to invest an additional $600 million (Rs. 4,546.80 crore) in Reliance Jio Platforms for a 2.08% equity stake on Friday.

Silver Lake is a Private Equity firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California has approximately $40 billion in combined assets and committed capital with investment in large tech firms over the years including video game engine maker Unity, Skype, consultancy firm Gartner, Alibaba’s Ant Financial, and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing, several of it in recent weeks.

In 2020, Silver Lake has invested in Expedia, Twitter, Airbnb, Waymo, and ServiceMax. The company made its first investment in 2013 when it invested in Bangalore-based commodity trading and risk management software firm Eka.

“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 business 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, in a statement.

Jio Platforms is the suite of services including music streaming service JioSaavn, smartphones, broadband business, on-demand live television service JioTV, and payments service JioPay.

In a statement, Mukesh Ambani, who oversees Reliance Industries, 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.”

In the company’s earnings call last week, Ambani said several firms had expressed interest in buying a stake in Jio Platforms, in which he has invested over $30 billion, in wake of the deal with Facebook.

After the investment from Facebook, the company started its JioMart e-commerce venture service in India with orders can be placed via Whatsapp that has more than 400 million users in India.