$8 billion and counting – Asia's richest man is reportedly in talks to raise more money for Reliance Jio

• After wooing Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista Equity, Ambani is now looking at Saudi Arabia’s $320 billion Public Investment Fund and US-based private equity giant General Atlantic for more funds.
• The new investment will be an addition to the $8 billion Ambani has raised and the fourth to come in within a month.
• The four-year old Reliance Jio is already the fourth most valued company in India.

Mukesh Ambani has already struck some of the biggest tech deals in India for his ambitious venture – Reliance Jio. After wooing Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista Equity, Ambani is now looking at Saudi Arabia’s $320 billion Public Investment Fund and US-based private equity giant General Atlantic for more funds.

According to a Bloomberg report, both the Saudi Arabia fund and General Atlantic are looking for a stake in Jio and the announcement could come in this month.


The new investment will be an addition to the $8 billion Ambani has raised and the fourth to come in within a month. On April 22, Reliance announced that it has raised $5.7 billion from social media giant Facebook. On May 4, the company went on to raise $750 million from Silver Lake and just four days later, announced a $1.5 billion funding from Vista Equity.

The four-year old Reliance Jio is already the fourth most valued company in India.

Jio is aggressively building its tech platforms to rake in benefits from the post covid world. It has already launched JioMart – an e-commerce venture which Reliance is now building with WhatsApp.

The Facebook-Jio partnership will also become the testing ground for innovation for WhatsApp. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in a recent earnings call that all the products and technology that they're building to enable the Jio partnership are going to be things that they want to do around the world.

“From what they have described to us, JioMart’s vision is that there are millions of small businesses and shops across India and they want to try to help get them on to a single network that you'll be able to communicate with through WhatsApp and do payments online through WhatsApp. So I think of that as a great, very large example of how we can wire up and help small businesses in the country where we have the largest WhatsApp community,” said Zuckerberg.

SEE ALSO:
Both Silver Lake and Mukesh Ambani hope that Reliance Jio will replicate Alibaba's magic⁠ — and this time Zuckerberg will get a chunk
WhatsApp is the secret sauce in the deal between Facebook and Reliance Jio