Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) will buy a 2.32% stake in Reliance Industries’ digital unit Jio Platforms for $1.49 billion, Reuters reports.
“We believe that the potential of the Indian digital economy is very exciting and that Jio Platforms provides us with an excellent opportunity to gain access to that growth,” PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said in the statement.
Jio Platforms also owns a slew of digital apps and services,
As TechCrunch reports, with this deal, Jio Platforms, which is India’s largest telecom operator with over 388 million subscribers, has secured $15.2 billion from ten investors including social giant Facebook in the past nine weeks by selling a 24.7% stake in its business.
“This investment will also enable us to generate significant long-term commercial returns for the benefit of Saudi Arabia’s economy and our country’s citizens, in line with our mandate to safeguard and grow the national wealth of the Kingdom,” Al-Rumayyan said.
PIF, which manages more than $300 billion in assets, invested $7.7 billion in global equities in the first quarter of 2020, according to a Reuters tally.
JIO is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, controlled by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani. Jio has disrupted the country’s telecoms sector by launching Jio Infocomm in late 2016 with free voice and cut-price data.
