UPDATED 22:19 EDT / MAY 17 2020

APPS

General Atlantic invests $870M into Indian mobile telco Jio Platforms

Private equity firm General Atlantic Service Company L.P. today said it has invested $870 million into Indian mobile telecommunications company Jio Platforms Ltd., following in the footsteps of Facebook Inc., which invested in the company last month.

For its $870 million investment, General Atlantic is receiving a 1.34% equity stake in the company on a fully diluted basis. Silver Lake and Vista Equity Partners have also recently invested in the company.

The valuation on the deal is reported to be $65 billion. TechCrunch reported that the number is a 12.5% premium on what Facebook invested in the company despite previous reports that Facebook invested on a valuation of nearly $66 billion.

Jio Platforms operates a variety of businesses, key among them Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., the largest mobile network in India with 388 million customers. Other services include a music streaming service called JioSaavn, on-demand live television, broadband and a payments service.

The company has raised a stunning $8.85 billion in the past month, selling 14.7% of its shares to foreign investors looking for a slice of the rapidly growing Indian market.

“General Atlantic shares our vision of a Digital Society for India and strongly believes in the transformative power of digitization in enriching the lives of 1.3 billion Indians,” Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, the majority owner of Jio Platforms, said in a statement.

Jio has teamed with Facebook to use WhatsApp with its JioMart grocery delivery service. The equity investment is also helping parent company Reliance meet a target of eliminating $21.4 billion in net debt by the end of the year.

General Atlantic is a prolific global investor. Among its better-known investments are Airbnb Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Ant Financial Services Group, Box Inc., Facebook, Slack Inc., Snapchat Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.

Including the new funding, Jio Platforms has raised $13.5 billion to date.

Photo: Jim Carter/Wikimedia Commons

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