Silver Lake to invest $1 billion in Reliance Retail for 1.75% stake

Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd said on Wednesday US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners would buy a 1.75% stake in its retail arm for 75 billion rupees ($1.02 billion), as the Indian conglomerate bolsters its retail presence in the country.

Reliance, controlled by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, has been aggressively building its retail business as it looks to attract potential investors over the next few quarters. With this, Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail account for over Rs 9 lakh crore of RIL valuation.

This marks the second large investment by Silver Lake in a Reliance Industries subsidiary after putting $1.35 billion (over Rs 10,200 crore) investment in Jio Platforms announced earlier this year.

In a rapid expansion into India's largely unorganised retail sector, Reliance in August bought the retail and wholesale business and the logistics and warehousing business of Future Group for $3.38 billion.

In May, Reliance launched JioMart, an online grocery service in a move aimed at rivalling Amazon's local unit and Walmart's Flipkart in the huge Indian market.

Silver Lake, whose portfolio of companies includes Airbnb and social media firm Twitter Inc, has previously invested in Reliance's digital business as part of a fund-raising spree by Reliance that saw the conglomerate raise more than $20 billion from investors including Facebook Inc and Alphabet's Google.

Shares of Reliance rose as much as 1.5% after the announcement in a Mumbai market that was down 0.5% as of 0400 GMT.