Reliance Industries Ltd and Jio Platforms have announced a Rs 11,367 crore investment by Vista Equity Partners Ltd into Jio Platforms. US-based private equity firm that runs the world’s largest exclusively tech-focused fund, will pick up a 2.3 percent stake in Jio Platforms. This is the third big investment into Jio Platforms in a matter of days and follows investment firm Silver Lake’s Rs 5,655.75 crore investment into Jio Platforms and social media giant Facebook, which invested $5.7 billion, or a Rs 43,574 crore deal, which gave Facebook as much as 9.99% stake in Reliance Jio. What does this mean for Vista and for Reliance Jio? For starters, Vista’s investment comes with a 12.5% premium compared with the Facebook deal last month. The subsequent investment by Silver Lake in Jio, confirmed earlier this week, was also at a similar premium compared with the Facebook deal.
Vista Equity Partners have more than $57 billion in capital commitments across sectors and have been investing for around 20 years now—it was founded in the year 2000 by American businessman and investor Mr. Robert F. Smith and Mr. Brian Sheth. This US-headquartered investment firm invests in tech and software companies, including enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled organizations across private equity, credit, public equity, and permanent capital strategies. Its portfolio constitutes more than 60 enterprise software, data and technology enabled companies across the world. Some of its top investments include Solera, Tibco and Inflobox.
This investment in Jio Platforms follows Vista Equity Partners’ investments in other companies, including financial services firms Advicent and Finastra, agriculture industry with AGData, construction company Eagle View, healthcare companies Advanced, Alegus and MindBody, insurance company Plansource, media and entertainment firms such as FWI and Naviga, the retail space with Kibo and in the global communication space with Tomia.
Reliance Jio says this investment by Vista further reinforces the recognition of the world-class digital platform that Jio has built, powered by leading technologies, such as Broadband connectivity, Smart Devices, Cloud and Edge Computing, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Augmented and Mixed Reality and Blockchain. This investment will give Jio Platforms a solid foundation to build on, towards what Reliance Jio says is a Digital India vision for 1.3 billion people and businesses across the country, including small businesses, micro-businesses and farmers.
Vista’s investment reaffirms Jio as the next-generation software and platform company, much beyond a telecom enterprise. With the third successive investment deal in a matter of days, Jio is continuing to attract global investors, one of the reasons being the company’s deep understanding of the Indian markets, the rapid digitisation opportunity post-COVID-19 and its capabilities to bring cutting-edge technologies and tools such as AI, Blockchain, AR/VR and Big data into play for all Indians.
Diverse marquee investors are becoming long-term shareholders of Jio Platforms because of a unique set of technologies and platforms under one entity. There are no similar opportunities available anywhere else globally.
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