Social media giant Facebook is reportedly in talks with India’s latest entrant in the telecom sector, Reliance Jio, to acquire a multi-billion dollar stake in the company. It has also come to light that Google has also been in talks with Jio for the same.
As per the report from Financial Times citing two people aware of the development, Facebook was close to acquire 10 percent stake in Reliance Jio but the talks haven’t move forward because of the coronavirus outbreak.
If everything would have worked as planned, then the deal was set to be announced by the end of this month. However, with the disruption causes by the coronavirus and India going under lockdown for three weeks, the deal seems to have been stuck.
While Google and Facebook have been in talks with Jio for acquiring stake, Microsoft is already partnered with Reliance Jio as the company had said last year that it would provide cloud-computing services to the Mukesh Ambani-backed company.
As per the report, the deal with Facebook will help Jio’s parent company Reliance Industries Ltd achieve the goal of cutting debt to zero by March 2021. The company is also planning to sell a 20 percent stake in its refining business to Saudi Aramco as part of this exercise.
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For Facebook, India is one of the biggest market with 328 million monthly users. The company’s instant messaging app WhatsApp has 400 million users in the country, most compared to any other market.
If the deal goes through, then it will mark the third investment for Facebook in India. In past one year, the company has invested $25 million in social commerce startup Meesho and around $15 million in ed-tech startup Unacademy.
Reliance Jio began its commercial operation in the second half of 2016 and so far, the company has upended the local telecom market by offering bulk of 4G data and free voice calls for six months. The firm’s entry led to price war within the sector to revise data plans and tariffs and several companies consolidated operations.
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