Abu Dhabi’s ADIA to invest $750m in Mukesh Ambani’s retail unit

A unit of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will invest INR55.1bn ($750m) in Reliance Industries Ltd.’s retail arm, as billionaire Mukesh Ambani continues to enlist marquee backers for the business and adding to the $4.4bn he has mopped up in recent weeks.

ADIA will buy a 1.2 per cent stake in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd.(RRVL), according to an exchange filing on Tuesday, valuing the business at INR 4.29 trillion.

With the latest investment, RRVL has raised INR377.1bn from global investors including Silver Lake, KKR, General Atlantic, Mubadala, GIC, TPG and ADIA in less than four weeks, the company said in the filing.

The deal brings yet another investor on board Ambani’s retail unit which has already sold stakes to partners including KKR & Co. General Atlantic and TPG among partners.

The latest round builds on the success of the 63-year-old tycoon’s technology venture, Jio Platforms Ltd., which raised more than $20bn from Facebook, Google and others earlier this year.

Source: Company Filings

With the spree of investments, Asia’s richest man is accelerating his efforts to transform his conglomerate into a retail and technology behemoth in a pivot away from its staple oil-refining business, one that he inherited after his father died in 2002.

The investor demand to buy into Ambani’s retail unit has been so strong that the group had to put some investors on a waitlist, people familiar with the matter had said in September.

Reliance Retail runs supermarkets, India’s largest consumer electronics chain, a cash-and-carry wholesaler, fast-fashion outlets and an online grocery store called JioMart.

It reported INR1.63 trillion in revenue in the year through March 2020. The unit operates almost 12,000 stores in nearly 7,000 towns.