Reliance Industries Ltd is soaring high. The tech to oil conglomerate has informed us that they have received another investment. This time they said that the Silver Lake Partners has invested ₹ 7,500 crores. Earlier, they had also invested in the company’s retail arm for a 1.75 percent stake. On the 9th of September, the Reliance Industries had said that they will receive a ₹ 7,500 crore investment from the California-based equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
According to a company statement in a regulatory filing, the company had said that RRVL had received “The subscription amount of ₹7,500 Crores from SLP Rainbow Holdings Pte Ltd (Silver Lake)”. They had also said “SLP Rainbow Holdings holds 1.75% of the fully diluted equity share capital” of RRVL. After the investment, RRVL was valued at a pre-money equity value of ₹4.21 lakh Crore.
This is the second investment of the Californian equity firm in the Reliance Industries Ltd. Previously the firm had made a ₹10,202.55 Crore investment in the technology or telecom arm of the RIL, Jio Platforms. The firm took in 2.08% of Jio in two tranches. The investment on the Jio platform was reported earlier this year. Their investment in Jio was followed by Facebook, who took in a 9.99 percent stake of the company for ₹43,573.62 Crores.
Mukesh Ambani, the fourth richest man in the world and the richest man of the country is developing Reliance’s Retail business to be the top retail venture in India. Since the launch of Jio, RIL had tremendously focused on growing the telecom company to its peak. In just four years, the newest member of the Indian telecom industry has left the veterans of the industry behind. The company is India’s most used network provider and is bringing in new customers regularly in huge amounts as thousands of customers flock to Jio from Vi and Airtel.
The company said in a statement, “Reliance Retail, through its new commerce strategy, has started a transformational digitalization of small and unorganized merchants and is committed to expanding the network to over 20 million of these merchants, helping them benefit from the use of technology tools and efficient supply chain infrastructure to deliver a superior value proposition to their own customers.”
Silver Lake is a US-based equity firm that has an investment in several technology-based companies around the world. The firm, which was founded in 1999, is one of the most prominent and largest technology investors in the world. Their investment in a wide range of companies such as Airbnb, Alibaba Group, Ancestry, Broadcom, Credit Karma, City Football Group, Dell Technologies, Endeavor, Expedia Group, Fanatics, First Advantage, Global Blue, GoDaddy, Jio, Lightbox, Motorola Solutions, NortonLifeLock, Red Ventures, Sabre Corporation, Skype, SoFi, GLG, Seagate Technology, SolarWinds, TEG, Twitter, Unity, Waymo, Weld North Education, WP Engine, Vacasa, and ZPG. Silver Lake has its offices in Silicon Valley while also operating from bases in New York, Hong Kong, and London.
Mukesh Ambani had earlier said about the investment from the company, “I am delighted to extend our relationship with Silver Lake to our transformational efforts of building an inclusive partnership with millions of small merchants while providing value to Indian consumers across the country in the Indian retail sector. We believe technology will be key to bringing the much-needed transformation in this sector so that various constituents of the retail ecosystem can collaborate to build inclusive growth platforms. Silver Lake will be an invaluable partner in implementing our vision for Indian Retail.”
Reliance had recently also bought in assets of the Future group to extend its capabilities in the retail segment. They also added ₹ 5,550 crores by selling a 1.28% stake in its retail business to US firm KKR and Co.