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Vaibhav Srivastava 
23 April 2020At Rs 43,574 Crore, Facebook buys 9.99% stake in Reliance Jio. On Wednesday, Reliance Jio, which is currently India’s biggest telecommunications company has got 43,574 crore investment from Facebook Inc. With that, the US-based social media giant will get a stake of 9.99% in the company on a fully diluted basis. This latest development boosted the share of Reliance Industries to over 8%.
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The deal will help to reduce the debts of Reliance India Limited (RIL) and give Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook an opportunity to have a strong foothold in the ever-growing market. As per the report in the Economic Times, the RIL said in the statement that Reliance Industries Limited, Facebook, Inc and Jio Platforms Limited today announced that they have signed binding agreements where Facebook is investing Rs43,574 crore into Jio Platforms.
The company further added, “The recent investment made by Facebook has valued Jio Platforms at Rs4.62 lakh crore pre-money enterprise value ($65.95 billion, assuming a conversion rate of Rs70 to a US Dollar).”
In a separate statement, Facebook said that the deal highlights its commitment to India. The country with more than 138 crore population is one of the biggest markets for Facebook with over 328 million monthly users and 400 million active users the company’s messaging app WhatsApp which is most in the world.
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On the other side, Mark Zuckerberg said “This investment was the need of the hour as small businesses are the backbone of the economy and they require our support. India is a country with more than 60 million small businesses and millions of people are dependent on them for jobs. With most communities all across the globe under lockdown, many of these businesses require digital tools on whom they can rely to get their customers and communicate with them to grow their businesses.”
