Microsoft Corp is now in the talks of negotiating an investment of nearly $2 billion in Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms Ltd, a Mint report quoted two people aware of the matter.
The source who spoke seeking anonymity said that Microsoft has been in discussions with several players in the digital payments services space. And with Reliance, the IT giant is looking at buying more tat 2.5% stake in Jio Platforms.
Well, it is imperative to note that if this deal is successful Microsoft will be a part of Jio Platforms that has already attracted investments worth $10 billion in one month. The investors include Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity partners, General Atlantic, KKR &Co.
However, the second source close to the matter said that even though Microsoft has shown interest in Jio, they cannot gurantee if the investment deal will make through.
Well, Microsoft and Jio have a partnership with Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure which hosting Jio's data on its servers in India.
Business Insider quoted Satya Nadella as saying, “Out long term partnership combines the power of Azure, Azure AI and Office 365 with Jio’s connectivity and digital solutions, which are among the most used and fast growing in the world."
“Our opportunity between Jio and Microsoft is to give them [MSMEs] full service, to make sure that they are fully enabled with all the toolsets and data sets. Because the mindset exists to really propel India forward. And, that is an even bigger opportunity than the consumer piece that we have been in the last few years,” Business Insider quoted Ambani.
It is to be mentioned that over the last month, leading technology investors such as Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista, General Atlantic and KKR have announced aggregate investments of Rs 78,562 crore into Jio Platforms.
