Reliance Jio has gone debt free courtesy of all the investments it got in the past few weeks. It has raised more than $20 billion recently. Amongst all of the investments, the only one which was in the radar of CCI was the Facebook one. Facebook was the first company which invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms Limited. Facebook hasn’t invested much in India for the last eight years or so and then this investment out of nowhere did surprise many. Another factor was the timing of this investment. During the time of the global pandemic, where the world economy has been hit bad, Reliance Jio has managed to raise a lot of money along with RIL’s rights issue.
CCI Approves the Deal
Competition Commission of India (CCI) overlooks the complete market to ensure that monopolies don’t form and the competition in the market is always fair. CCI was at its toes when Facebook’s investment for Jio came in. It immediately started overlooking the deal. Facebook and Reliance Industries together notified the CCI that their current agreement doesn’t change the landscape of the competition in India in any way. With that, both the companies told CCI that they will continue to work independently. Today a tweet came from CCI saying that it approves of the deal.
Facebook’s Investment on Jio Platforms
Facebook had acquired a 9.99% minority stake in India’s number one telecom operator, Jio Platforms. For that, it paid an amount of $5.7 billion or Rs 43,574 crore. This investment from Facebook became the biggest FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in the technology sector of India. The thing which CCI was worried about was the data which both the companies might share with each other. Facebook has over 328 million people and at the same time, Jio has a user base of 388 million subscribers. That is why it became very important for CCI to ensure that this deal between both the companies wouldn’t result in the ouster of existing domestic competition for Jio. Now, CCI is happy with the terms and conditions of the deal that Facebook and Jio have set and that is why it has approved of the deal.
