Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) agreement with US private equity giant Silver Lake is an evidence of the group’s increasing focus on technology. The markets are now expecting additional deals.

On Monday, global private equity major Silver Lake Partners entered into an agreement to acquire stakes for an investment ₹5,655.75 crore in Jio Platforms, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL, in lieu of a 1.15 per cent.

READ : Silver Lake to invest Rs 5,655 crore in Jio Platforms

“Over the last two years, RIL, most probably for Jio Digital, has acquired companies that are from industries ranging from AI to blockchain. With Mukesh Ambani's increasing focus on technology for value creation, it would be ideal to have the experience of Silver Lake, a leader in technology investing on board," Anas Rahman Junaid, Managing Director and Chief Researcher at Hurun India told BusinessLine .

RIL, in the last two years, has invested in many companies - Embide and Nowfloats in edutech space, Saavn and Grab in media and entertainment space; Haptik and Vakt Holdings in AI; Fynd and C-Square in e-commerce; Reverie in Saas; Netradyne in logistics.

Founded in 1999, Silver Lake focuses on technology investing with over $40 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital. Its portfolio of investments generates more than $230 billion in revenue annually and employs 3,70,000 people globally. The investments included Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies, and Twitter, among others.

Investments

The investment by Silver Lake in Jio Platforms will be used for redemption of Optionally Convertible Preference Shares (OCPS) held by RIL (will go to RIL). The investment would further help in pegging equity value of Jio Platforms (owning Jio Infocomm) and also improve the cash flow thus, accelerating deleveraging initiative by the company, Axis Capital said in a report.

According to a report by J.P. Morgan, RIL had highlighted that there is interest from other investors in Jio Platforms and that it is in “good shape to announce a similar-sized investment in the coming months. In this context, while the investment is a positive, the size is relatively small versus the investment announced by Facebook and hence investors would like to see more investments into Jio Platforms.”

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