Facebook Pumps A Massive US$5.7b Into Reliance Jio

Facebook has paid US$5.7 b for a stake of around ten per cent in Jio Platforms, the digital technology arm of Reliance Industries. 

The transaction, which was first reported by the Financial Times in late March, is Facebook’s biggest deal since the purchase of messaging service WhatsApp and makes it Jio’s largest minority shareholder.

Jio is the umbrella company for Reliance’s digital and internet businesses, including telecommunications company Reliance Jio, which has almost 390m subscribers. Other brands in its portfolio cover mobile apps, smart devices, cloud computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence, among other areas.

Both Facebook and Reliance are banking on the partnership to ramp up India’s digital revolution and are betting on WhatsApp to evolve into an Indian version of Tencent’s WeChat.

For a start, the deal will involve JioMart, Reliance’s new e-commerce initiative for small business ventures, to leverage on 400m WhatsApp users across India, and facilitate the contactless transactions of  their grocery buying and other essentials from neighbourhood stores during the nationwide lockdown.   

In the longer term, the partnership is likely to have a major impact in the live sports streaming industry across India,  as it is, Reliance Jio is keen on expanding its live sports offering, with board member Nita Ambani telling the FT in October that the company was eyeing up digital rights for the Premier League .

Facebook also has sporting interests in India, where it holds the rights to Spanish football’s top-flight La Liga and recently announced a deal with the International Cricket Council (ICC) to become the exclusive digital content rights partner in the Indian sub-continent for the governing body’s global events through to 2023.