Alphabet Inc’s Google has paid ₹33,737 crore to Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) digital subsidiary, Jio Platforms Ltd, joining the list of global investors such as Facebook to have infused capital in the Mukesh Ambani-led company. With this transaction, Google now holds 7.73% stake in Jio Platforms.
The transaction also marks the US technology giant’s biggest-ever investment in an Indian company.
With this, Jio Platforms has raised a total of ₹1.52 trillion by selling nearly 33% stake to 13 financial and strategic investors in just 11 weeks. This has helped RIL erase its net debt much ahead of the March 2021 target.
Google and Jio Platforms will also collaborate to develop “an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimisations to the Android operating system and the Play Store”, the two companies had said in July.
“Jio Platforms will pursue this global opportunity and create a significant source of revenue from both the domestic and global markets,” said RIL in a statement.
The partnership with Google was announced by RIL chairman Ambani during the company’s annual meeting.
Jio Platforms, with more than 388 million users, houses the digital assets of RIL, including broadband connectivity, cloud and edge computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence.
The Google-Jio deal will seek to leverage Jio and Google’s existing digital services to capture the emerging digitisation market beyond the current 500 million internet users in India.
