According to sources that chose to remain anonymous, Reliance Industries ltd is planning to invest around $250-$300 million in order to buy a stake in Indian mobile content provider Glance by InMobi, backed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
Glance InMobi, founded in 2019, is a mobile content provider for lock screens and in general, providing short videos and news updates. Mobile companies often tie up with such platforms owing to the massive number of users these platforms have. Glance has somewhere around 10 million daily active users. Its one particular app, Roposo, offers content in a dozen Indian languages.
Bearing in mind that Jio soon might release its phone that is being worked on with Google, this investment might be a step towards inculcating a platform to provide curated content through the smartphone. Furthermore, Glance is backed by Google Inc’s subsidiary Alphabet, which might have been the reason for Reliance to zero on this certain platform.
The ‘affordable smart phone’ Jio has been working on along with Google is expected to hit the markets around the festive period in the month of October. This deal would definitely help Jio in carving out a space for itself in the currently competitive short-video content space.
The investment could be finalised anytime in the coming few weeks, as reported by the sources.
Last year in July 2020, Google and Reliance had partnered for a commercial journey, out of which coming with a low-cost smartphone for the Indian audiences was one goal. Chairman Mukesh Ambani had claimed it as “an effort to build a local technology titan.” Google following the partnership has agreed to invest around $4.5 billion in the same initiative.
The company had plans to unveil the anticipated phone earlier this month, but owing to the global shortage of semiconductors, the release dates were postponed.