Silver Lake invests Rs 7.5 billion in Reliance Retail Ventures, gets 1.75% stake

On Wednesday, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) announced that Silver Lake would invest Rs 7.5 billion in RRVL. The investment fixes RRVL at a pre-money capital value of Rs 4.21 lakh crore. Silver Lake will also get a 1.75% equity interest in RRVL on a fully diluted basis.

Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of RRVL, is one of the largest retailers in India. It serves nearly 640 million visitors in its more than 12,000 stores throughout the country. Reliance Retail has recently shifted its focus to digitizing small, unorganized merchants. It is also holding cutting edge technologies like AI, blockchain, AR / VR, and big data.

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

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

In addition to Jio Platforms, Silver Lake has invested in several global technology companies like Airbnb, Alibaba, Alphabet's Waymo, Dell Technologies, ANT Financials, Twitter, and Verily, among 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.