- US tech giant Google will invest $4.5 billion (33,737 Crore INR) in Jio Platforms for a 7.7 percent stake, said Reliance Industries Chairman and CEO Mukesh Ambani at the company’s 43rd Annual General Meeting.
US tech giant Google will invest $4.5 billion (33,737 Crore INR) in Jio Platforms for a 7.7 percent stake, said Reliance Industries Chairman and CEO Mukesh Ambani at the company’s 43rd Annual General Meeting on Wednesday. That makes Google the 13th investor in a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. The investment makes it a corporation with zero debt. Ambani said the capital raising goal for the company had now been through.
RIL is the first Indian company to have crossed $150 billion in market capitalization, riding on the success of its Jio Projects mobile digital arm, which had already drawn equity investments from Facebook, Qualcomm, Intel, KKR, TPG, Abu Dhabi Investments Authority, and others. Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms, has 388 million subscribers.
“I am looking at operating collaboratively with them. What they are bringing is more than just money. They carry our brave mission and our willingness to conduct a strong vote of confidence.
This is the first time that India’s largest company, like many other firms, has arranged a virtual AGM due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Google said, “This is the first investment announced earlier this week from the Google For India Digitization Fund that aims to accelerate India’s digital economy over the next five to seven years through a combination of equity investments, collaborations and financial, technology and ecosystem investments”
As all RIL AGMs, the 43rd was also eagerly awaited-this time on the company’s investor expectations to announce the launch of its financial services and payment branch. The business has a 70:30 joint venture with State Bank of India ( SBI) and financial services such as insurance, broking, payments are seen as the next frontier for RIL ‘s anticipated disruption, similar to the one it caused in telecom services.
Mukesh, the elder of the late Dhirubhai Ambani’s two sons, has effectively turned the oil and gas exploration and petrochemicals sector into telecoms and retail.
The company, Jio Platforms, has drawn people including Twitter, Qualcomm, Intel, KKR, and others from the world’s tech and private equity companies. The latest sources, unformed by RIL, said search behemoth Google could invest in Jio Platforms as much as $4bn.
In 2019-20, RIL posted a combined turnover of approximately 6.59 trillion, up 5.4 percent from the previous year. The group’s net income rose 11.3 percent to around $443.24 billion.
Reliance Jio also launched Jio’s latest innovation, Jio Glass. “The Jio Glass is at the cutting edge of technology that provides best-in-class Mixed Reality services to give users a truly meaningful immersive experience,” Kiran Thomas at #RILAGM. “Jio Glass is making teachers and students come together in 3D virtual rooms and conduct holographic classes through our Jio Mixed Reality cloud in real-time. With JioGlass, the traditional way of learning Geography will now be History,” he further added.
Other Major Highlights were- Television Jio TV+ to offer content from 12+ OTT platforms and Jio claims it has developed its 5G solution
