Reliance to acquire Reverie Technologies for Rs 190 Cr, invest more by 2021

Bengaluru-based local language technology service startup Reverie Technologies has been acquired by Reliance Industries Investments & Holdings (RIIHL), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. Documents filed by Reliance earlier this week with the National Stock Exchange said it would invest up to Rs 190 crore in Reverie to acquire its shares and would also invest up to Rs 77 crore in the startup. This investment is likely to close by March 2021.

This will translate to close to 83.3 percent equity stake in Reverie Technologies. Launched in 2010, Reverie is a cloud-based, language-as-a-service (LaaS) platform that helps apps and content go multilingual. The venture’s LaaS platform helps organisations enhance their market reach manifold by delivering their applications and content in local languages in real-time.

As of 2018, Reverie had a turnover of Rs 7.6 crore. According to the filing, "Reverie would work in collaboration with Reliance ecosystem for integrating its services in the various existing digital consumer platforms of the group."

This isn't Reliance's first investment in an Indian startup. The industrial conglomerate picked up a 72.69 percent stake in online education platform Embibe in April last year. It was one of the biggest transactions in the Indian education and deep technology space and Reliance's second major transaction in the year.

Earlier in the year, Reliance inked a strategic deal with New York-based music-and-artiste platform Saavn to merge it with its own digital music offering, Jio Music. The deal was valued at $1 billion, with Jio Music having an implied valuation at $670 million.

Also read: Reliance announces strategic investment of $180M in Embibe, the largest AI platform for education

Also read: How Reverie Technologies is solving the great Indian language challenge

YourStory has reached out to Reverie for a confirmation but was yet to hear back from them at the time of publishing this story.

Apart from Reverie, Reliance also announced that its subsidiary has entered into an agreement to acquire shares in data solutions and software company Easygov for up to Rs 18 crore. This would give it a nearly 76 percent stake in Easygov on the completion of this deal. The filings also said that it was investing up to Rs 16.02 crore to acquire an 83 percent stake in software simulation services company SankhyaSutra Labs Private Limited. 

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is India’s largest private sector company, with an annual turnover of Rs 297,990 crore as of September 2018 and a net profit of Rs 18,975 crore.