Asia’s biggest billionaire on Thursday scored a significant investment for his retail business, increasing the total raised for Reliance Retail over the past month to about $ 3.4 billion.
The latest inflow of cash, about 62.5 billion rupees ($ 855 million) from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, will give the state investment fund a 1.4% stake in India’s largest retailer.
Now, Ambani appears to be directing those efforts to another part of his conglomerate. In recent weeks, Reliance Retail has secured funding from a group of prominent investors, including Silver Lake, KKR, General Atlantic, and Mubadala.
Each of them had also invested money in Reliance’s technology division, suggesting that there was continued trust among the group’s existing investors.
“We are pleased to deepen our relationship with Reliance Industries through this investment,” said Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Managing Director and CEO of Mubadala, in a statement.
Reliance has big ambitions for JioMart, which has set itself a goal of convincing 30 million small stores to do business on the platform. The new investment will likely be used to help build that initiative, as well as improve its supply chain, according to Kiran Pedada, an assistant professor of marketing at the Indian Business School.
Under Ambani’s leadership, Reliance Industries has grown from an oil and energy company to a growing conglomerate that includes retail stores, a mobile phone and broadband operator, digital platforms and more.
This investment only marks one more step in that direction, Pedada said.
“Ten years ago, if you talked about Reliance, people said ‘oil company,'” he said. Now, it’s all about the technology.
“They are changing their approach,” Pedada added. “In my opinion, they are looking at it from a very long-term perspective. In my opinion, I think it will be one of the largest omnichannel retailers in the world.”
– Rishi Iyengar and Sherisse Pham contributed to this report.
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