Indian telecom firm Jio gets $747 million investment from Silver Lake

Jio has over 388 million subscribers, making it India's biggest telecom operator.

What you need to know

• Private equity firm Silver Lake is investing $746.8 million in Jio Platforms, India's largest telecom network provider.
• The announcement comes just weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms.
• Silver Lake will own a 1% stake in Jio Platforms.

Last month, Facebook announced an investment of $5.7 billion in India's biggest telecom network provider, Jio Platforms. Just two weeks later, Jio Platforms has now secured a fresh $746.8 million investment from Menlo Park-based private equity firm Silver Lake. The investment will give Silver Lake around 1.15% stake in the Indian telecom giant.

As noted by TechCrunch, this is only the second time that Silver Lake is investing in an Indian firm. In 2013, it had invested in Eka Software, a Bangalore-based commodity management startup. However, Silver Lake has been investing in several popular tech firms over the last few years. In March this year, it invested $1 billion in Twitter and led a $2.25 billion investment in Waymo. Last month, the company invested in popular travel site Expedia and Airbnb.

Egon Durban, CEO and Managing Partner at Silver Lake, said in a statement:

Jio has brought extraordinary engineering capabilities to bear on bringing the power of low-cost digital services to a mass consumer and small businesses population. The market potential they are addressing is enormous, and we are honored and pleased to have been invited to partner with Mukesh Ambani and the team at Reliance and Jio to help further the Jio mission.

Facebook, which now holds 9.99% stake in Jio, is working together with Reliance to transform WhatsApp into an e-commerce platform in the country. Soon after Facebook announced the $5.7 billion investment in Jio, the two companies began testing JioMart, a WhatsApp-based e-commerce venture.

Facebook and India's Jio begin testing JioMart WhatsApp-based e-commerce platform

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