After lying low due to the crash in India's stock markets following the global rout caused by the coronavirus pandemic, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani has once again emerged as the richest Asian, pushing Alibaba founder Jack Ma to the second spot. Ambani's fortune rose about $4.7 billion to $49.2 billion on Wednesday, after Reliance Industries Ltd. gained 10 per cent on the news of a deal with Facebook.
The jump put Ambani about $3.2 billion ahead of China's Jack Ma, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The deal with Facebook also pushed RIL's valuation higher to around $4.24 trillion in market capitalisation.
At the same time, Ambani, the world’s largest oil refinery owner, saw his wealth declining by $14 billion on the Bloomberg ranking till a day ahead on Tuesday, the biggest fall in dollar terms for anyone in Asia due to the global rout in oil prices. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Ma had lost almost $1 billion through Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.
In its biggest deal after acquiring WhatsApp in 2014, Facebook, on Wednesday announced an investment of $5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) for acquiring a minority stake in Jio Platforms Ltd, in a move to expand its footsteps in the world's largest market in terms of subscriber base. "Today, we are announcing a $5.7 billion, or Rs 43,574 crore, investment in Jio Platforms Limited, part of Reliance Industries Limited, making Facebook its largest minority shareholder," the company said in a statement.
This is a match made in heaven for Facebook, which has 300 million users in India. Its messaging application WhatsApp has over 400 million users. In the September quarter of 2019, Facebook had managed to touch 9 per cent growth rate largely thanks to emerging markets such as India and Indonesia. In addition, the company is close to launching WhatsApp pay, a UPI-based in-chat payment feature.
Jio, as of January 2020, became the largest telecom operator number in India by both subscriber base as well as revenue market share. According to data available with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Jio added 5.6 million mobile subscribers in the month of November 2019, bringing the sum total of users to 369.93 million, dethroning Vodafone Idea Ltd as the largest network. Jio, according to the data, holds a 32.04 per cent share in the more than 1.15-billion-user Indian mobile services market.
Reliance Jio made a big bang entry into India’s telecom industry over three years ago, ushering in its 4G VOLTE services with massive discounts and cuts in tariffs. In 2019, Jio had launched a digital literacy initiative ‘Digital Udaan’ in partnership with Facebook for first-time internet users. India is now the second largest smartphone market in the world with 158 million shipments in 2019, and Facebook itself acknowledged Reliance Jio's impact on its fortunes in India.
With its half-billion internet users, the South Asian country is a key market for the world's largest technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google.
