Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd and Asia’s richest man, has planned to infuse huge amount of capital into the startup ecosystem. Looking forward to act as an accelerator for the startups in India, Ambani said that startups geared towards meeting India’s needs in developmental, agriculture and creation of livelihood would be key beneficiaries.
“Jio is a startup built in India, for India, by Indians and we have a special place in our hearts for startups. You may know 80% of the cost of running a startup goes towards cloud and connectivity infrastructure,” Ambani said.
He further said that Jio is ready to take away this cost by making the connectivity and cloud infrastructure absolutely free for budding startups.
“I urge all startups to register for their custom designed package on Jio.com and this service will be available from January 1, 2020. Jio will also invest and financially support those startups which have the potential to address India’s big needs in agriculture, healthcare, education and skill development which will boost the creation of new livelihood,” he added.
Ambani, with his slew of investments into the startup system has picked up stakes in over 20 businesses and small companies over the past two years.
In the recent development by Reliance in the Indian startup ecosystem, the company acquired Haptik, an AI-based conversational platform, in a ₹700 crore deal. Post the acquisition, the combined entity, valued at over $1 billion.
Besides, Reliance Industries Ltd has infused capital worth ₹295.25 crore in Fynd, a Mumbai-based fashion platform. RIL said its subsidiary has an option to further invest Rs 100 crore in Shopsense Retail Technologies, which runs Fynd, by December 2021.
The total investment will translate into an 87.6% stake in Fynd, it further said.
RIL further added that the investment would further enable the group’s digital and new commerce initiatives.
Further more, according to the sources, Reliance has been beefing up investments and acquisitions in the tech and Internet space as it prepares to launch services like e-commerce on the back of its huge reach through Reliance Jio Infocomm.