New Delhi: US social networking giant Facebook announced on Wednesday morning that it would invest a whopping Rs 43,547 crore ($5.7 billion) in Reliance Industries’ wholly-owned subsidiary ‘Jio Platforms’ to expand its presence in India.
Facebook’s investment translates into a 9.9% stake in Jio, making it the largest foreign direct investment for minority investment in India.
“Reliance Industries Limited , Jio Platforms Limited and Facebook, Inc. today announced the signing of binding agreements for an investment of Rs 43,574 crore by Facebook into Jio Platforms. The investment by Facebook values Jio Platforms at Rs 4.62 trillion pre-money enterprise value ($65.95 billion, assuming a conversion rate of Rs 70 to a US Dollar),” the company said in a press release.
Reliance Jio, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has been the fastest-growing telecom network in the country since its launch in 2016. Jio has more than 388 million customers in India.
“Concurrent with the investment, Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail Limited and WhatsApp have also entered into a commercial partnership agreement to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s New Commerce business on the JioMart platform using WhatsApp and to support small businesses on WhatsApp,” the Mukesh Ambani-owned firm said.
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Facebook said that its focus would be to create ways for people and businesses to operate more effectively in a digitally growing economy. WhatsApp and Instagram, which are now a major part of lives of Indian people, are also owned by Facebook.
“We are excited about furthering our investment in India’s vibrant digital economy. Our efforts with Jio will be focused on opening new doors and fuelling India’s economic growth and the prosperity of its people. We look forward to working with Jio, and to future collaborations in India to advance this vision”, the company added.
In a post put out on Wednesday morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the social networking giant would be teaming up with Jio Platforms on some “major projects that will open up commerce opportunities for people across India”.
“India is home to the largest communities on Facebook and WhatsApp, and a lot of talented entrepreneurs. The country is in the middle of a major digital transformation and organisations like Jio have played a big part in getting hundreds of millions of Indian people and small businesses online.”