Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has signed a binding partnership with Google to pick up 7.7 per cent stake in Jio platforms for an investment of Rs 33,737 crore, said RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday. Addressing the 43rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company virtually, Ambani said, “We are delighted to welcome Google as a strategic investor in Jio Platforms. We have signed a binding partnership and an investment agreement, under which Google will invest Rs 33,737 crore for a 7.7 per cent stake in Jio Platforms.” He said that the company has attracted investments from most admired tech and financial investors including Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, and TPG, who have a long history of successfully investing in the best tech and growth enterprises. Total funds raised for Jio is Rs 1.5 lakh crore. “We welcome ADIA and Mubadala of the UAE and PIF of Saudi Arabia as our valued partners. What they bring is more than money – they bring faith in our economy’s immense growth potential,” Ambani said. “Intel and Qualcomm, who have shaped the semiconductor industry, are at the heart of the digital ecosystems. Reliance will work with them to develop new products for India and Indians,” he added. Ambani also welcomed Facebook, a global tech powerhouse and a leading social media and internet company, as a premier strategic partner. He said that our world will change more in the next eight decades than it did in the last 20 centuries and expressed confidence that India can lead this change if its enterprises are empowered with necessary tech infrastructure and capabilities. “Jio Platforms is conceived with the vision of developing original, captive intellectual property, using which we can demonstrate the transformative power of technology across multiple ecosystems – first in India, and then rest of world,” Ambani said. Ambani said Reliance is now truly a zero net debt company and added that the company has an extremely strong balance sheet that will support growth plans for its three Hyper-Growth Engines — Jio, Retail and O2C. “Cumulatively, RIL has raised Rs 212,809 crore through rights issue, combined investments in Jio Platforms, and investment by BP. It is in excess of our net debt of Rs 161,035 crore at the end of FY19-20,” Ambani said. He said that RIL has completed India’s largest-ever Rs 53,124 crore rights issue. It was the world’s largest rights Issue by a non-financial institution in a decade. It was over-subscribed 1.59 times, setting another record in Indian capital markets.
