In recent days, Jio Platforms and Reliance Industries have garnered several heavy-weight investors as the company sought to become net-debt free. Now, on Wednesday, another massive company has joined the list, with an investment of Rs 33,737 crore in Jio Platforms. Google is now picking up a 7.73% stake in the Indian company.
But this is not all.
Google will now be partnering with Reliance Jio in its efforts to help in the digitisation of India.
Taking to Twitter on Wednesday, Sundar Pichai the Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet and Google LLC said that the company was also partnering with Reliance Jio for the Google for India Digitisation Fund.
As per the post, out of the $10 billion fund, the first investment in partnership with Jio would be of $ 4.5 billion.
"Everyone should have access to the internet. Proud to partner with @reliancejio to increase access for the hundreds of millions in India who don’t own a smartphone with our 1st investment of $4.5B from the #GoogleForIndia Digitization Fund," Pichai wrote.
Speaking on Wednesday, Reliance Industries Chairman, Mukesh Ambani said that Jio has designed a complete 5G solution and it will be available for trials as soon as spectrum is available.
"Google and Jio are partnering to build an Operating System that could power a value engineered, entry-level 4G/5G smartphone. The Jio-Google partnership is determined to make India 2G-mukt," Ambani said.
Incidentally, the Google investment in Jio platforms is the 14th such investment in the last few months.
(With inputs from agencies)
