Jio set to add General Atlantic as investor in Jio Platforms

General Atlantic is discussing a potential investment of about $850 million to $950 million in Jio Platforms. It is spearheaded by Sandeep Naik, Managing Director, Head of India & Southeast Asia and Shantanu Rastogi, Managing Director, General Atlantic, India, both based in Mumbai.

Chuck Feeney, an Irish-American businessman, the co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, established General Atlantic in 1980 to invest in high-growth businesses, support visionary founders like himself and fund the global charitable pursuits of the Atlantic Philanthropies, to which he has donated virtually all of his wealth.

The company was founded as a direct investment entity to make large minority investments in growth companies, with a focus on computer software and services. At the time, there were only two forms of private investments: venture capital and leveraged buyouts.

The founding General Atlantic team saw an opportunity to take a thematic approach: identify the sectors likely to produce significant growth and the leading companies in those sectors, and partner with management to accelerate growth.

Over time, General Atlantic has broadened its global reach by first investing in Europe in the late 1980s and then entering the region in the late 1990s, opening offices in China and India in the early 2000s, Brazil in 2008, and Southeast Asia in 2011 and, most recently, Jakarta in 2019. Today, GA is a global growth equity platform, investing across four sectors – Technology, Consumer, Financial Services and Healthcare – with the same mission as when it first began.

General Atlantic is a global growth equity investor. And invests in four global sectors: Consumer, Financial Services, Healthcare and Technology. Its capital partner relationships have expanded over the past four decades, with global families comprising the majority of our capital base. It operates outside of traditional funding cycles, utilizing patient and long-term capital.

This transaction would add to the $8 billion of investments that Jio has sealed in the past month. Facebook Inc. in April agreed to pay $5.7 billion for a 10% stake in the digital unit, while Silver Lake and Vista Equity Partners said they would invest about $2.25 billion in total in two separate transactions this week.

The string of investments from technology giants and private equity firms will go toward slashing debt at Reliance Industries, which is controlled by Mukesh Ambani, who is Asia’s richest man. The outside money also helps set a valuation for Jio, which until recently has been largely owned by the billionaire’s conglomerate.

―CT Bureau