Vista Equity Invests $1.5B In India's Jio Platforms, Joining Facebook, Silver Lake As Stakeholders

Vista Equity Partners has invested $1.5 billion in Indian behemoth Reliance Industries Ltd.'s digital arm Jio Platforms, the latter announced Friday (New Delhi time).

The investment comes less than a week after Silver Lake invested $748 million in Jio Platforms. Facebook Inc. FB last month announced a $5.7 billion investment in the same company.

Reliance said the investment makes Vista Equity the third largest stakeholder in Jio following itself and Facebook.

Why It's Important

The funding values Jio at $68.3 billion, about the same as Silver Lake's investment, and a 12.5% premium to the equity valuation of Facebook's investment.

Jio was launched in late 2016 by Asia's second-richest man Mukesh Ambani, and has since become the largest telecom operator in India. The company has been aggressively expanding in providing digital services in the country, including streaming video-on-demand, music streaming, and news apps.

Its latest interest in e-commerce, in partnership with Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, presents a challenge to Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and Walmart Inc. WMT subsidiary Flipkart in the country.

"We believe in the potential of the Digital Society that Jio is building for India," Vista Equity CEO Robert Smith said in a statement. "Mukesh's vision as a global pioneer, alongside Jio's world-class leadership team, have built a platform to scale and advance the data revolution it started."