After monetising Jio Platforms -- which houses the firm's telecom arm and digital ventures, richest Indian Mukesh Ambani is looking to rope in investors in the retail business.
For years, many Wall Street investors wrote off Dell Inc as a dying personal computer company. But Silver Lake Partners is betting about $1 billion that they're wrong. Here' why...
US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners will invest an additional Rs 1,875 crore in the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the Indian firm said in a statement on Wednesday.
The PE biggie has committed to pumping money into Jio Platforms, Byju's and Reliance Retail so far this year - all marquee names in their respective sectors.
This marks the second billion-dollar investment by Silver Lake in a Reliance subsidiary after the $1.35 billion investment in Jio Platforms.
The deal, as well as some other strategic and financial investments in works, will help Ambani cut debt at RIL.
The takeover surpasses the previous LBO record -- the $45 billion buyout of Texas utility TXU Energy in 2007 -- and underscores investors' long-term bet on blockbuster gaming franchises.
Michael Dell clinched shareholder approval on Thursday for his $25 billion offer to buy and take Dell Inc private, ending months of conflict with the company's largest investors and removing the uncertainty surrounding the world's No. 3 PC maker.
ICICI Securities expects Jio Platforms' ensuing IPO to fetch "premium valuations", as was the case in the high-profile equity raise of FY21, and has pegged the company's equity value at $148 billion by September 2027.
They weren't up for a windfall even after the trophy but life was certain to get a lot better as some sponsors and state governments stepped up to lift them financially.
Jio Platforms Limited is likely to have a valuation of $148 billion by the time it goes public on the back of strong free cash flow and potential deleveraging, ICICI Securities said.
Reliance Jio, India's biggest telecom operator, is planning to launch an initial public offering (IPO) and listing on bourses in the first half of 2026, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Friday. Jio is currently a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, India's most valuable company.
Michael Dell is expected to take majority ownership of the world's third-largest personal computer maker.
According to reports, private-equity firms such as Silver Lake Partners are considering bidding for Yahoo.
Media giant AOL, along with some private equity firms, is 'exploring' making an offer to buy Yahoo Inc, as the Internet company deals with poor financial performance and an exodus of senior executives, a media report said.
Asian Paints, Axis Bank, UltraTech Cement, IndusInd Bank and Bajaj Finance were also among the gainers. The NSE Nifty rallied 171.25 points or 1.52 per cent to 11,449.25.
Qatar's sovereign wealth fund is in early discussions to buy a minority stake in billionaire Mukesh Ambani's rapidly expanding retail unit for about $1 billion (Rs 8,200 crore), sources said. The Qatar Investment Authority is keen on tapping the fast-growing Indian market and has entered into a discussion to buy about 1 per cent stake in Reliance Retail Ventures, sources with knowledge of the matter said. Talks, sources said, are at a preliminary stage and being led by an executive director on the board of parent Reliance Industries Ltd.
The company hopes to revive its fortune with the move
Investment by US PE firm KKR will add fire to Ambani's battle for dominance in the retail market that is also being eyed by Jeff Bezos' Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart.
Sources deny reports that the football club's Russian billionaire owner is selling the club
Since September, Reliance Retail has raised money from Silver Lake, KKR, Mubadala, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority , GIC, TPG, General Atlantic and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund in a divestment programme that mirrored sister Jio Platforms a few months earlier.
Michael Dell struck a deal to take Dell Inc private for $24.4 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, partnering with the Silver Lake private equity firm and Microsoft Corp to try to turn around the struggling computer company without Wall Street scrutiny.
Investments totaling over $9.5 billion in Jio Platforms by a clutch of private equity firms, following social media giant Facebook's $5.7 billion mid-April investment in the company, helped overall.
While the investment amount could not be immediately ascertained, a report pegged it at about $2 billion.
The deal follows Facebook picking up a 9.99 per cent stake in the firm that houses India's youngest but largest telecom firm on April 22 for Rs 43,574 crore. Within days of that deal, Silver Lake -- the world's largest tech investor -- bought a 1.15 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 5,665.75 crore. On May 8, US-based Vista Equity Partners bought 2.32 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore.
BlackRock has again reduced the valuation of its share in edtech firm Byju's - this time to about $1 billion, TechCrunch reported on Friday, citing disclosures made by the US-based asset manager. This is 95 per cent less than its peak valuation of $22 billion in 2022. The markdown comes at a time when the company is facing a multitude of challenges, including securing fresh capital, delays in financial reporting and legal disputes with lenders.
Jio Platforms is expected to use its 388 million mobile phone subscribers as the cornerstone of an e-commerce and digital services business to rival Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart.
Diverse marquee investors are becoming long-term shareholders of Jio Platforms because of a unique set of technologies and platforms under one entity.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday announced to raise Rs 7,350 crore from two investors -- Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and Global alternative asset firm TPG -- by selling a stake in group's retail arm.
With investors asking for a change in the board structure at Byju's, the edtech giant's founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Byju Raveendran, is now asking them to put $300 million into the company for more control. The company has rung up $5.8 billion from investors such as General Atlantic, Sofina, the Qatar Investment Authority, Sumeru Ventures, Vitruvian Partners, BlackRock, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia, Silver Lake, Bond Capital, Tencent, and Tiger Global.
Reliance Retail has bought a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, India's leading quick commerce player, for $200 million (around Rs 1,488 crore) as it looks to expand its presence in online grocery delivery business. Dunzo has raised $240 million (about Rs 1,787 crore) in its latest funding round that was led by Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) - the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the two firms said in a statement. Existing investors Lightbox, Lightrock, 3L Capital and Alteria Capital also participated in the funding round.
Credit Suisse said if the deal fructifies, then this will bring together the largest offline and online retailers in India.
Reliance Industries on Friday announced the sale of 2.32 per cent stake in its digital unit to US-based Vista Equity Partners for Rs 11,367 crore, the third deal in a little over two weeks that will inject a combined Rs 60,596.37 crore in the oil-to-telecom conglomerate to help it pare debt. The US-based private equity firm will buy a stake in Jio Platforms, which houses the country's youngest but biggest telecom firm Jio, at an equity value of Rs 4.91 crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 crore.
Byju's, India's most-valued startup, has decided to put two of its key assets -- Epic and Great Learning -- on the block to generate $800 million-$1 billion in cash, with an aim to meet the edtech firm's various commitments, including repaying the entire $1.2 billion term loan B (TLB) within six months, according to sources. The cash-strapped company has proposed repaying $300 million of the $1.2 billion loan in the next three months, depending on whether the lenders accept Byju's amendment proposal, said the people familiar with the development. "This loan repayment proposal has been submitted to the lenders and conversations are going in the right direction," said a person in the know.
'Which fund manager in the world will put money into a company that hasn't filed its annual account?'
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
Ambani said Reliance raised Rs 1.15 lakh crore from global tech investors by selling a little less than a quarter of the firm's digital arm, Jio Platforms Ltd, and another Rs 53,124.20 crore through a rights issue.
He takes over from Ashutosh Vaidya, who will move into a full-time position as head of Global Delivery for Dell Services.
Education topped the table with nearly $1.755 billion as against $379 million last year, followed by real estate which received $754 million.
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