Silver Lake Invests $747 Million in Jio Platforms at Premium Valuation
Private equity firm Silver Lake invests roughly $747 million in Reliance Jio Platforms, securing a 1.15% stake at a $65 billion valuation that marks a 12.5% premium over Facebook's recent deal.
Private equity firm Silver Lake invests $746.8 million in Jio Platforms, acquiring a 1.15% stake in India's top telecom operator. This new investment values the Reliance Industries subsidiary at $65 billion, which represents a 12.5% premium over the valuation implied by Facebook's $5.7 billion investment just weeks prior.
Silver Lake, a Menlo Park-based firm with around $40 billion in assets, brings a strong track record of backing major technology companies like Airbnb, Twitter, and Alibaba's Ant Financial. The firm highlights Jio's impressive engineering capabilities and its success in delivering low-cost digital services to hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses across India.
Since launching commercial operations in 2016, Jio upends the local telecom market by initially offering free data and voice calls, a strategy that helps it amass 388 million subscribers. Beyond traditional telecom, Jio Platforms operates a vast ecosystem of digital services, including music streaming app JioSaavn, live television service JioTV, and its JioPay payments platform.