Jio Platforms to use ₹28,000 crore from Facebook to redeem RIL OCPS, cut debt

NEW DELHI: Jio Platforms will use ₹28,000 crore from the ₹43,574 crore deal with Facebook to redeem optionally convertible preference shares (OCPS) of its parent Reliance Industries and retain ₹15,000 crore in its books, a top company official of the Mukesh Ambani company said in a conference call on Wednesday.

“ ₹15,000 crore will be retained in the books of the company. The rest will go into redeeming OCPS of RIL. The entire amount goes into reducing the debt of the group,” Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy at Reliance Jio Infocomm, said in the conference call that also had vice president and managing director of Facebook's India unit Ajit Mohan joining it. Reliance Jio Infocomm, India's largest mobile services provider with 388 million subscribers, is a fully-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms.

The debt in Jio Platform books is around ₹40,000 crore, Thakur said.

When asked about the plans of the group to list Reliance Jio, Thakur said, “We do intend to take the company public medium-term but nothing beyond that today.”

Facebook will invest ₹43,574 crore ($5.7 billion) to buy a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms. The social media giant will get a seat on the board of the company as well as an observer seat in the mobile-to-ecommerce giant.

The deal gives the mobile communications, entertainment and e-commerce platform a pre-enterprise value of ₹4.62 trillion, assuming a conversion rate of ₹70. The rupee is currently hovering between 76 and 77 against the US dollar. Facebook will become the largest minority shareholder of Jio after the deal has got its regulatory approvals.

India with its over one billion mobile user base is also the largest market for Facebook and its messaging app Whatsapp, that has over 400 million subscribers in the country.

Jio was launched in September 2016 and in just over three years, became India’s largest mobile services company by subscriber base. It is the only Indian telecom company that has its entire network built on 4G VoLTE (voice over long-term evolution) technology. All other companies have a blend of 2G, 3G and 4G technologies.