Reliance Retail-Silver Lake Deal: 5 Key Things to Know About First Major Investment in RIL's Retail Unit

American Private equity giant Silver Lake Partners will invest Rs 7,500 crore for a 1.75 per cent in the retail arm of India’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Reliance Retail. This investment comes close on the heels of Reliance Retail’s minority stake purchase in Kishore Biyani-led Future Group.

Here are five key things to know about the Reliance Retail-Silver Lake deal:

– Silver Lake Partners is investing Rs 7,500 crore in Reliance Retail in exchange for a 1.75 percent stake.

– The investment values Reliance Retail at a pre-money equity value of Rs 4.21 lakh crore, RIL said in an exchange filing on September 9.

– Silver Lake along with its co-investors has already invested Rs 10,202.55 crore in two rounds in RIL’s Jio Platforms.

– With the latest investment, Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail account for over Rs 9 lakh crore of RIL valuation.

– This deal is significant as RIL is expanding its retail business and lining up a posse of global investors to take on rivals such as Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart in the world’s second most populous country.

Reliance Retail Venture’s subsidiary Reliance Retail operates India’s largest, retail business serving close to 640 million footfalls across its 12,000-odd stores nationwide.

This investment by Silver Lake is being viewed by industry watchers as a vote-of-confidence in Reliance Retail’s ability to lead a disruptive, technology-led transformation of India’s retail sector in a post-pandemic world.

Silver Lake Partners is a specialist firm focused on technology companies and has invested in global tech majors like Twitter, Airbnb, Alibaba, Dell Technologies, ANT Financials, Alphabet’s Waymo, and Verily amongst others.

Commenting on the transaction with Silver Lake, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries, said, “I am delighted to extend our relationship with Silver Lake to our transformational efforts of building an inclusive partnership with millions of small merchants while providing value to Indian consumers across the country in the Indian retail sector.