Mukesh Ambani announced his plans to make Reliance Industries debt free by early 2021. The biggest Indian business group in terms of stock market valuation, had nearly $22 billion at the end of March 2019 and Reliance Industries has been planning stake sale to reduce debt. Few weeks ago, Reliance Industries announced that Facebook was picking 9.9 percent stake in Reliance Jio platforms for USD 5.7 billion. After Facebook deal, many leading new technology investment funds have bought stake in Jio Platforms.

Facebook’s 9.9 percent stake at $5.7 billion valued Reliance Jio platforms at $65 billion. Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners was the next to pick up one percent stake in Jio Platforms for $750 million, at nearly 12.5 percent higher valuation than what Facebook paid for the stake. In the meantime, Reliance Industries stock jumped as market experts expressed confidence in Reliance’s plan to go debt free earlier than the planned date.

Within six weeks of Facebook deal, Reliance has announced 7 stake sale deals and the enterprise valuation of Jio Platforms has been rising ever since. On May 8, another US-based private equity major Vista Equity Partners picked 2.32 percent stake in Jio Platforms for US $1.5 billion.

New York-headquartered private equity firm General Atlantic also picked up 1.34 percent stake in Jio Platforms for $870 million. The deal values Reliance Jio Platforms at $65 billion. General Atlantic has invested in big names in technology sector including Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Box, ByteDance, Facebook, Slack, Snapchat and Uber.

Private equity firm KKR also announced an investment of Rs 11,367 crore in Reliance Jio for 2.32% stake. Announcing the KKR investment, Mukesh Ambani said, “I am delighted to welcome KKR, one of the world’s most respected financial investors, as a valued partner in our onward march to growing and transforming the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. KKR shares our ambitious goal of building a premier Digital Society in India.”

Last week, Silver Lake Partners announced another investment in Jio Platforms for one percent stake at Rs 4,545 crore.

On June 4, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Company also announced investment of Rs 9,090 crore in Jio Platforms. As Reliance continues announcing new investments in its Jio Platforms unit, market analysts and brokerages have raised their target price for Reliance with suggestions for long term BUY. The recently announced deals have raised stock market valuation of Reliance Industries and the company is now ranked as the largest in India in terms of market capitalization.

Reliance also announced Rights Issue in May and the company successfully raised $7 billion. The company offered existing shareholders the option to buy Reliance stock at Rs 1,257 per share with share ratio at 1:15. The issue was oversubscribed 1.5 times. Reliance rights issue marks the largest rights issue in Indian market till date. On June 5, Reliance stock closed at Rs 1,579 and the stock touched 52-week high during intraday trade.

Reliance Industries has so far invested $30 billion to build Jio Platforms. The telecom and technology major has been able to disrupt the Indian telecom space. With its plans to enter online retail, Reliance Industries would pose a major challenge to Amazon and Wal-Mart owned Flipkart in India.