[Funding alert] Silver Lake to pick up 1.75 pc stake in Reliance Retail for Rs 7,500 Cr

Private equity company Silver Lake Partners will invest Rs 7,500 crore in Reliance Retail for a 1.75 percent stake, the Mukesh Ambani-led company announced on Wednesday.

Earlier this year, Silver Lake had invested $1.35 billion in Reliance Jio. The PE giant's retail buy comes weeks after Reliance bought a stake in Future Group, led by Kishore Biyani, via its retail unit.

The latest investment values Reliance Retail at $57 billion, or Rs 4.21 lakh crore.

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Egon Durban, CEO and Managing Partner of Silver Lake, said in a statement:

"We are pleased to deepen our relationship with Reliance. The success of JioMart in such a short time span, especially while India, along with the rest of the world, battles the COVID-19 pandemic, is truly unprecedented, and the most exciting growth phase has just begun."

"Reliance’s New Commerce strategy could become the disruptor of this decade," he added.

Reliance Retail, which operates nearly 12,000 stores across India, has been fleshing out its retail business to compete with the likes of Amazon and Flipkart. The oil-to-telecoms behemoth has been trying to digitise the unorganised merchants sector to create more efficient supply chains that will help it better rival ecommerce giants.

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of 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."

"We believe technology will be the key to bring the much-needed transformation in this sector so that various constituents of the retail ecosystem can collaborate to build inclusive growth platforms," he added.

Reliance's shares were slightly higher - around 0.4 percent - at Rs 2,110.05 in early trading on Wednesday. Shares rose around one percent when news of Silver Lake's investment broke.