ADIA to invest $750m in India's Jio Platforms

Jio Platforms is the holding company for various internet and telecom assets owned by Indian oil-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries. ADIA is a sovereign wealth fund manager that invests on behalf of the Abu Dhabi government. The investment follows capital commitments last week by Mubadala, another Abu Dhabi-headquartered sovereign investor.

Silver Lake, which agreed to invest INR56.5 billion last month, will put in another INR45.4 billion. The second tranche includes commitments from LP co-investors.

Reliance Industries, the parent of Jio Platforms, issued separate statements regarding the ADIA and Silver Lake investments. In total, Jio Platforms is expected to receive INR978.8 billion ($12.9 billion) in committed capital from seven external investors who are set to collectively own 19.9% of the company. The deals are subject to regulatory and customary approvals.   

Founded in November last year, Jio Platforms is the parent of India's Reliance Jio Telecom, the country’s leading mobile carrier which claims to have more than 387.5 million subscribers. Reliance Industries has positioned Jio Platforms’ app ecosystem as a gateway to the internet for first-time users of mobile internet services. Other subsidiaries are working to expand the company’s presence in broadband services, cable television, and e-commerce.

It is expected that the company will offer a bundled package that would be accessible to Indians currently priced out from high-speed internet and streaming-related content services. At the same time, a network of Jio-branded convenience stores is expected to fulfill online orders on JioMart, the company’s daily goods-themed e-commerce platform, with inventory supplied by Jio-owned warehouses.

"Jio Platforms is at the forefront of India’s digital revolution, poised to benefit from major socioeconomic developments and the transformative effects of technology on the way people live and work. The rapid growth of the business, which has established itself as a market leader in just four years, has been built on a strong track record of strategic execution," said Hamad Shahwan Aldhaheri, an executive director of private equities at ADIA.

At present, DishTV is the market leader for over-the-top cable services with 23 million subscribers nationwide. ACT Broadband is the largest broadband internet service provider with 1.5 million customers. JioFiber, the company’s broadband service that would also offer access to entertainment offerings, had just 840,000 subscribers at the start of the year.

Recent media reports indicate that both Jio Telecom rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Idea are in talks with Amazon and Google respectively for external investment. Bharti Airtel has dismissed the reports as speculation.

Softbank-backed Grofers and BigBasket, backed by Alibaba, are the country’s two leading grocery delivery platforms. 

Reuters has reported that Reliance plans to explore a public listing in the US next year with a target valuation of $90-95 billion. Reliance Industries, which mostly gets its revenue from oil-related activities, has INR3.36 trillion in outstanding debt. The company has declared an ambition to eliminate net debt by the end of the current financial year and raised INR531.2 billion in capital through a discounted rights issue last week.

ADIA invests across more than two dozen asset classes and sub-categories across the world. In India, it has also invested in KKR’s India-based non-banking financial company and renewable energy producer Greenko Energy Holdings, as well as anchoring a special situations fund launched by Kotak Private Equity.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Expansion
• Technology
• India
• Silver Lake
• Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited