Facebook is said to be in negotiations to acquire a stake in Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm, the Financial Times reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. It said the social media giant was close to an initial agreement to pick up a 10% stake but discussions hadn’t moved forward on account of the global disruption following the coronavirus outbreak. A deal was to have been announced by March end, the FT said.
The FT report said Google had also been talking to Jio separately, citing one of the people above. Microsoft had said last year that it would provide cloud-computing services to businesses along with Jio. India is the biggest market for Facebook with 328 million monthly users and the company’s WhatsApp messaging app has 400 million users in the country, also the most in the world.
Jio and Facebook didn’t respond to ET’s queries and Google couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
A deal with Facebook will help Ambani achieve his ambition of cutting parent company Reliance Industries Ltd’s debt to zero by March 2021, the FT said. Reliance Industries aims to sell a 20% stake in its refining business to Saudi Aramco as part of this exercise. Ambani had spoken of plans to turn Jio into a separate company last year and said there was interest from potential investors at the time.
Source: Economic Times