Silver Lake invests ₹7,500 crore in Reliance Retail Ventures, acquires 1.75% stake

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) on Wednesday announced that Silver Lake will invest ₹7,500 crore into RRVL. The investment pegs RRVL at a pre-money equity value of ₹4.21 lakh crore. Silver Lake will also acquire a 1.75% equity stake in RRVL on a fully diluted basis.

Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of RRVL, is India’s one of the largest retailers. It serves close to 640 million footfalls across its over 12,000 stores across the country. Reliance Retail has recently shifted its focus on digitisation of small and unorganised merchants. It is also embracing cutting edge technologies such as AI, blockchain, AR/VR, and big data.

Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisor to Reliance Retail and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Davis Polk & Wardwell acted as legal counsels. Latham & Watkins and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co acted as legal counsels for Silver Lake.

That said, private equity firm Silver Lake was one of the first to invest in Reliance’s Jio Platforms. Silver Lake has invested ₹10,202.55 crore in Jio Platforms. It also acquired a 2.08% stake.

Apart from Jio Platforms, Silver Lake has invested in several global tech companies such as Twitter, Airbnb, Alibaba, Dell Technologies, ANT Financials, Twitter, Alphabet’s Waymo and Verily amongst others.

“I am delighted to extend our relationship with Silver Lake to our transformational efforts of building an inclusive partnership with millions of small merchants while providing value to Indian consumers across the country in the Indian retail sector. We believe technology will be key to bringing the much-needed transformation in this sector so that various constituents of the retail ecosystem can collaborate to build inclusive growth platforms. Silver Lake will be an invaluable partner in implementing our vision for Indian Retail,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries.

“We are pleased to deepen our relationship with Reliance with this investment. Mukesh Ambani and his team at Reliance have created an outstanding world leader in retail and technology through their courageous vision, commitment to societal benefits, innovation excellence and relentless execution. The success of JioMart in such a short time span, especially while India, along with the rest of the world, battles the COVID-19 pandemic, is truly unprecedented, and the most exciting growth phase has just begun. Reliance’s New Commerce strategy could become the disruptor of this decade. We are thrilled to have been invited to partner with Reliance in their mission for Indian Retail,” said Egon Durban, Co-CEO and Managing Partner of Silver Lake.