Battle Of The Titans

The investments of Facebook and Google in Jio Platforms have cemented RIL’s position, catapulting its market value and putting it way ahead of TCS in the No.1 spot

- NEVIN JOHN

In early March, when the government was contemplating a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of coronavirus, billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s core team was in the last lap of negotiations with global tech giants Facebook, Intel, Qualcomm and a slew of foreign private equity investors, inviting them to invest in Jio Platforms (JPL), the telecom and digital subsidiary of Reliance Industries (RIL). Talks with Google were also shaping up, though there were differences on valuation. The lockdown had a devastating effect on the economy — factories grounded to a halt, migrant workers rushed to their home towns, the stock market crashed and banks counted on possible loan defaults. On March 23, RIL’s share crashed to ₹875 from its January high of around ₹1,500.

A month later, on April 22, JPL announced sale of 9.99 per cent stake to Facebook for ₹43,574 crore. Over the next three months, when everyone was working from home, 13 more deals, ending with the Google investment of ₹33,737 crore for a 7.73 per cent stake were done. Ambani sold 32.97 per cent in JPL to raise ₹1.52 lakh crore, amazing industrialists who were confined to their homes. These deals resulted in the average market cap of RIL during the October 2019-September 2020 period touching ₹10.5 lakh crore, a 35 per cent rise over the previous year.