Google has become the latest high-profile firm to back India’s Reliance Jio Platforms. The California giant is investing $4.5 billion for a 7.7% stake in the top Indian telecom network, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani announced at its Annual Meeting this week, according to TechCrunch.
The investment today from Google is one of the rare instances when the Android-maker has joined its global rival Facebook in backing a firm. Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, which has amassed more than 400 million subscribers in less than four years of its existence, in April this year for a 9.99% stake in it. Facebook is the largest minority stakeholder in Jio Platforms. Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries has raised about $20.2 billion in the past four months from 13 investors by selling about 33% stake in the firm. Google’s new investment gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of $58 billion — the same valuation implied by Facebook. Other investors, including General Atlantic, Silver Lake, Qualcomm, Intel and Vista, have paid a 12.5% premium for their stake in Jio Platforms.
As part of Wednesday’s strategic announcement, Google and Reliance Jio Platforms will work on a customized-version of Android operating system to develop low-cost, entry-level smartphones to serve the next hundreds of millions of users, said Ambani. These phones will support Google Play and future wireless standard 5G, he said.
