India’s Reliance Industries Limited which became the country’s most valuable company today has managed to be net debt-free almost nine months ahead of its set target following to its $22.2 billion fundraising initiative over the last eight weeks.
The Mukesh Ambani-led company has collected $15 billion from global tech investors like Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, L Catterton and Public Investment Fund by trading less than 25 percent of its digital arm Jio Platforms.
Mukesh Ambani Chairman and MD Reliance Industries
“Over the past few weeks, we have been overwhelmed by the phenomenal interest of the global financial investor community in partnering with Jio. As our fund-raising milestone from financial investors is achieved, we sincerely thank the marquee group of financial partners and warmly welcome them into Jio Platforms.”
Meanwhile, the company also gathered another $7 billion through a rights issue in the last 58 days. Moreover, Reliance Industries has also managed to sell its 49 percent shares to Bharat Petroleum in an Indian fuels and mobility joint venture branded as Jio-BP. Adding this, Reliance Industries has raised more than $23 billion in the last seven months.
Pertaining to the capital raise in the last two months, Reliance Industries Limited in its filing to the country’s national stock exchange, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) highlighted, “The combined capital raised has no precedence globally in such a short time. Both of these are also indebted to Indian corporate history and have set new benchmarks. This is even more remarkable that this was achieved amidst a global lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Reliance Industries has its presence in almost all popular sectors in the country ranging from petrochemicals to grocery segments. Some of its businesses include clothing and accessories ventures (Reliance Trends), eCommerce platform (Reliance Retail) and also video conferencing with the launch of JioMeet. Along with this, the organization has also combined all its digital services under one umbrella organization Jio Platform, which includes JioSaavn, JioTV, JioCinema, JioMoney, JioNews, Ajio and more.
