Reliance Jio frenzy - Softbank, FB, Silver Lake, Vista, GA & Saudi!
Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio platform (telecom giant founded in 2015) received minority investments from Facebook, Silver Lake, and Vista in the past couple of weeks valuing the company at over $65 billion. I also remember reading about Softbank eyeing an investment in Jio last year and now I hear that General Atlantic and Saudi's Public Investment Fund are also in talks with the firm to inject more capital.
Being in the US, I may have limited knowledge of the firm and its business model but would love to hear insights into what is driving all the top PE investors and the likes of FB to write billion-dollar checks to Jio? Is all this frenzy justified especially given the circumstances?
Interested
Jio is essentially bringing internet (specifically mobile Data) to India at a POS cost of living standard. The internet has just begun to blow up in rural parts of India because of Jio. Hundreds of millions of ppl will be paying for Jios services.
It’s revolutionary for Indians. E-commerce is going to blow up in India
My knowledge is limited but here's what I'm aware of. What essentially is driving all of this is Mukesh Ambani's plan to substantially reduce the debt on the parent company Reliance Industries. He's been looking to do that for sometime now and the news of PIF planning to invest has been around for a while. The reason Facebook has invested is because it wants to tap into the digital payments market in India through WhatsApp (around 400 million users). They're together trying to create some sort of a platform/ecosystem for small local/community businesses (called kirana stores) such that you could order groceries and shit through WhatsApp and get it delivered immediately. Also having Ambani on your side really makes doing business in india far easier. As a business Jio in itself has done really well and now with future plans there's a lot of upside. I would also think having Facebook invested in Jio is a huge vote of confidence for other investors.
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