Reliance Retail arm receives ₹7,500 cr from Silver Lake for 1.75% stake sale

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Saturday said it has received ₹7,500 crore from US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, which has picked up 1.75% stake in its retail arm.

Earlier, on September 9, RIL had announced that Silver Lake would invest ₹7,500 crore into its arm Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL). 

RRVL has received "the subscription amount of ₹7,500 crore from SLP Rainbow Holdings Pte Ltd (Silver Lake)", RIL said in a regulatory filing on Saturday. 

Following the allotment of equity stake, "SLP Rainbow Holdings holds 1.75 percent of the fully diluted equity share capital" of RRVL, it said.

This investment had valued RRVL at a pre-money equity value of ₹4.21 lakh crore.

This is the second billion-dollar investment by Silver Lake in a Reliance Industries subsidiary after the USD 1.35 billion investment in Jio Platforms announced earlier this year.

With more than USD 60 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a focus on the world's great tech and tech-enabled opportunities, Silver Lake is the global leader in large-scale technology investing.

Its other investments have included Airbnb, Alibaba, Alphabet's Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies, Twitter and numerous other global technology leaders.

Late last month, Reliance acquired the retail and logistics businesses of Future Group for ₹24,713 crore to boost its retail vertical.

Silver Lake was the first US private equity firm to invest in Jio after tech giant Facebook took a 9.99% stake in the company for ₹43,573.62 crore. Silver Lake bought 2.08% in Jio in two tranches for a total of ₹10,202.55 crore.

Rival private equity groups KKR, Vista and General Atlantic followed Silver Lake to take stakes in Jio. Other notable investors included Google and Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.