Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) will invest ₹5,512.50 crore in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd for a 1.2% stake, in the seventh stake sale by the Mukesh Ambani-led company to as many investors in less than four weeks.
With Tuesday’s transaction, the retail unit of Reliance Industries Ltd has raised a total of ₹37,710 crore ($5.13 billion) since 9 September, selling a total stake of 8.48%.
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s transaction values Reliance Retail Ventures at a pre-money equity value of ₹4.29 trillion.
Other investors in Reliance Retail Ventures include Silver Lake Partners, KKR and Co., General Atlantic, Mubadala, GIC and TPG.
Reliance is currently in the process of completing its acquisition of Future Group’s retail, wholesale and logistics businesses.
“Reliance Retail’s vision is to galvanize the Indian retail sector through an inclusive strategy…Reliance Retail, through its new commerce strategy, has started a transformational digitalization of small and unorganized merchants and is committed to expanding the network to more than 20 million of these merchants,” Reliance Industries said in a press release.
The flurry of investments in Reliance Retail is a repeat of a similar exercise parent Reliance Industries executed for its digital assets venture Jio Platforms earlier.
In a drill that lasted less than three months till July, Reliance Industries had raised ₹1.52 trillion by selling a third of its stake in Jio Platforms.
Incidentally, all but one investor in Reliance Industries’ retail venture are also investors in Jio Platforms, the exception being Singapore’s GIC.
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has a 1.16% stake in Jio, which it bought for ₹5,683.50 crore.
The focus on getting foreign investors to another consumer-facing venture is part of Reliance Industries’ playbook of combining its vast digital network with its retail business and being present in every Indian household.
Reliance Retail Ventures has about 12,000 stores across the country, and with the ongoing investments coupled with the Future Group deal, Ambani will stay on course in his aspiration to command the retail market, taking on billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart-owned Flipkart in India.
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