Reliance Industries on Saturday announced Rs 73.50 billion ($1 billion) investments by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and global private equity firm TPG Capital in its retail unit, taking the total fundraising in the last one month to Rs 321.97 billion ($4.39 billion).
While GIC invested Rs 55.12 billion in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) for a 1.22 per cent stake, TPG took 0.41 per cent interest for Rs 18.37 billion, the company said.
These investments value Reliance Retail at a pre-money equity value of Rs 4.285 trillion, they said.
This is TPG’s second investment in a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, following a Rs 45.46 billion investment in digital unit Jio Platforms announced earlier this year.
With these, Reliance Industries has sold 7.28 per cent stake in the retail unit since September 9.
Reliance Retail Ltd, a subsidiary of RRVL, operates India’s largest, fastest-growing and most profitable retail business spanning supermarkets, consumer electronics chain stores, cash and carry wholesale business, fast-fashion outlets, and online grocery store JioMart.
It operates about 12,000 stores in nearly 7,000 towns, with 640 million footfalls across core categories of grocery, consumer electronics and apparel. Revenue for Reliance Retail in FY20 was Rs 1.63 trillion.
The investment will add fire to Ambani’s battle for dominance in the retail market that is also being eyed by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com and Walmart Inc’s Flipkart.
Reliance Retail has consolidated its dominant market positioning in offline retail through its recent acquisition of retail, wholesale, logistics and warehouse business of Future Group for an enterprise value of Rs 241.73 billion.
The firm in May this year launched JioMart, the e-commerce platform. Reliance aims to digitise Kirana stores through its new commerce business. In July, JioMart was serving 400,000 orders a day and is currently operational in 200 cities.
