Facebook All Set To Acquire 10% Stake In Reliance Jio In A ‘Multi-Billion Dollar’ Deal; Is TikTok A Reason?

Amidst the coronavirus outbreak, very big and impactful news has come in from the telecom and social media sector.

World’s biggest social media network: Facebook, is now all set to acquire 10% stake in Reliance Jio, India’s biggest telecom provider in terms of subscriber base.

This is partnership can be hailed as Indian corporate’s one of the biggest announcement partnerships in recent years.

Jio Can Sell 10% Stake To Facebook?

As per some reports, a formal announcement was about to be made in March, but due to the coronavirus impact, the announcement was delayed.

There has been no confirmation from Jio or Reliance on this story.

The size of this deal is still uncertain, but insiders are terming this as a ‘multi-billion dollar’ deal.

As per some analysis, Reliance Jio can be worth $60 billion, and this means, that Facebook can be spending around $6 billion or Rs 45,000 crore for acquiring 10% stake in Reliance Jio.

Recently, Reliance was in news for another sale in their stakes: Saudi Arabia based world’s biggest oil company Aramco is about to close a deal wherein they will acquire 20% stake in Reliance for $15 billion, again, one of the biggest deals for any Indian company.

The deal was announced in August 2019, and can be made final this year.

Jio-Facebook Partnership: How Does It Look Like?

Jio right now controls 32.1% market share in India, in terms of subscribers, and 35% market share in terms of revenues. 37 crore users have a JIo SIM card right now.

While Facebook is world’s biggest social media portal with 60% of Internet users having a Facebook account. 2.4 billion people use Facebook globally, while 26 crore are India users of Facebook.

In case Facebook is able to acquire 10% stake in Jio, then indirectly they will have the largest number of users and subscribers, anywhere in the world. 

Facebook is facing intense competition from TikTok in India, and a partnership with Jio can be a step in that direction.

More details are awaited.

We will keep you updated, as more news come in.