Indian telecommunications and technology titan Jio Platforms Ltd. said it is raising 113.67 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) from U.S. private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners, the latest in a string of investments as the Mumbai-based firm trims its debt.
The investment comes after
last month said it would pay $5.7 billion for just under 10% of Jio, and days after another American private-equity firm, Silver Lake, said on Sunday that it is pouring $750 million into Jio.
“We believe in the potential of the digital society that Jio is building for India,” Vista Equity Chief Executive Robert F. Smith said in a statement Friday.
The Austin, Texas-based firm will get a 2.3% stake in Jio, which is part of Indian conglomerate
Reliance Industries Ltd.
Reliance is controlled by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and has investments spanning media, retail and natural resources.
Reliance in recent years spent more than $30 billion building from scratch its upstart mobile operator, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., which is part of Jio Platforms. Reliance has said it is aiming to be net debt free by next year.
Mr. Ambani said in a statement that Vista “shares with us the same vision of continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem.”
Jio has attracted more than 388 million subscribers with inexpensive mobile data plans, and is now moving into e-commerce as legions of people in the country of 1.3 billion begin transacting online for the first time.
Vista’s investment brings them into the Facebook-Jio partnership, which is allowing consumers in India to use the Menlo Park, Calif. company’s ubiquitous WhatsApp messaging app to buy goods from tiny neighborhood shops. Jio has been signing up small vendors via low-cost point-of-sale machines.
“Facebook is looking beyond advertising now,” said Satish Meena, an e-commerce analyst at Forrester in New Delhi. ”They are entering retail, but they need Reliance’s push.”
Investors such as Facebook and now Vista are “buying into the value” Jio’s platform will be able to provide due to its massive reach, Mr. Meena said. “A lot of this is untested but they’re relying on the skills of Reliance to deliver at scale.”
Foreign firms have been pouring billions of dollars into India’s tech industry, hoping to get a piece of the world’s biggest untapped digital economy.
Amazon.com Inc.
has said it is investing $5 billion in the country, while
Walmart Inc.
in 2018 paid $16 billion for India’s biggest domestic e-commerce startup, Flipkart.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com and P.R. Venkat at venkat.pr@wsj.com
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