General Atlantic to invest $870m in India’s Jio Platforms

India’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) announced that its digital services arm, Jio Platforms, is set to receive about US$870 million from New York-based private equity firm General Atlantic in exchange for a 1.34% stake.

The investment pushes Jio’s total capital raised just in the last four weeks to roughly US$8.9 billion after securing funds from Facebook, Silver Lake, and Vista Equity Partners. It also gives the RIL subsidiary an equity value of close to US$65 billion and an enterprise value of over US$68 billion.

Mukesh Ambani during World Economic Forum 2007 / Photo credit: World Economic Forum

General Atlantic is a global growth equity major that has been investing in the tech, consumer, financial services, and healthcare sectors for over 40 years. Some of its notable tech investments include Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Bytedance, Facebook, Slack, and Uber.

“General Atlantic shares our vision of a digital society for India and strongly believes in the transformative power of digitization in enriching the lives of 1.3 billion Indians,” said RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani.

Launched in 2016, Jio Platforms is RIL’s umbrella platform for its digital initiatives. It operates telecom unit Jio Infocomm, music-streaming service JioSaavn, grocery shopping app JioMart, and online payments platform JioMoney, among others.

See also: Why is Facebook betting $5.7b on Reliance?

Prior to Facebook’s massive US$5.7 billion injection into Jio, it was reported that the two companies were looking to build a super app that would combine features such as social, digital payments, and gaming.

In a video message after the deal, Ambani said that WhatsApp will be helping small neighborhood stores in India, known as kiranas, accept digital payments. JioMart has piloted a service that enables customers to place orders from local grocers straight from the messaging app.