Reliance Strategic Business Ventures buys 23.3% stake in US-based Exyn for $25 mn

Reliance Industries-backed Reliance Strategic Business Ventures (RSBVL) on Thursday acquired a 23.3% stake in Exyn Technologies (Exyn) for a total consideration of $25 million. This deal is expected to have synergies with Reliance’s investments and strategic initiatives in drone, industrial safety and security, and robotics areas. RIL announced the development in its regulatory filing.

Both, RSBVL and Exyn, entered into a strategic partnership agreement for technology collaboration and commercialization of Exyn’s technology.

Incorporated in Delware, in 2014, Exyn is an early-stage technology company and is pioneering multi-platform robotic autonomy for complex, GPS-denied environments.

In its regulatory filing, RIL said, the aforesaid investment and partnership by RSBVL will have synergies with Reliance’s investments and strategic initiatives in drone, industrial safety & security and robotics areas, while accelerating Exyn’s product and technology development across multiple application areas and commercialization.

Exyn's full-stack solution enables flexible deployment of single or multi-robots that can intelligently navigate and dynamically adapt to complex environments in real time. Exyn is one of the leading autonomy technology company, which enable drones/robots to navigate difficult terrains without GPS or other navigation technologies.

Notably, for the said investment, no governmental or regulatory approvals were required. Also, the transaction does not fall within related party transactions, and none of RIL’s promoter / promoter group/group companies have any interest in the transaction.

Also, on Thursday, RIL announced that Reliance Retail Ventures signed definitive agreements to acquire a 100% equity stake in METRO Cash & Carry India for a total cash consideration of ₹2,850 crore. The acquisition will add uniquely positioned multi-category large-format stores to Reliance Retail’s store footprint across India and further strengthen its new commerce business.

In another development, RIL's telecom arm Reliance Jio was selected by one of the major oil marketing companies, Indian Oil Corp (IOCL) for providing SD-WAN solutions.

As per the statement, Reliance Jio Infocomm's enterprise arm, JioBusiness will be deploying and managing SD-Wan (software-defined wide area network) for IOCL across its 7,200 retail outlets for a period of 5 years.

On BSE, RIL shares closed at ₹2,577.90 crore marginally lower from the previous day. RIL is the largest company in terms of market share with a valuation of more than ₹17.44 lakh crore.