The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Wednesday said it has approved Facebook's proposed acquisition of 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms.
In April, Facebook announced an investment of $5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) in Jio Platforms.
The acquisition was to be done through Jaadhu Holdings LLC. This is Facebook’s wholly owned subsidiary it created earlier this year. Jio Platforms is the digital arm of Reliance Industries, which houses all of the group’s digital businesses, including Reliance Jio.
In a tweet, the CCI said it has approved "acquisition of 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms by Jaadhu Holdings LLC".
Both companies filed an application with CCI earlier in June. They said in their application that the deal was ‘pro-competitive, benefits consumers, Kirana stores and other small and micro local Indian businesses, and take forward the vision of digital India’, as per a Times of India report.
The approval comes a week after Bloomberg reported that CCI is reviewing the deal to ensure there is no misuse of data, as it does with all the deals its looks into.
The Bloomberg report quoted CCI Chairman Ashok Kumar Gupta as saying that peculiarities such as ‘strong network effects, high returns to scale and access to a huge amount of data may incentivize digital firms to engage in anti-competitive conduct’.
Facebook invested Rs 43,574 crore in Jio Platforms towards the end of April for a 9.99% stake. Post this, Jio Platforms raised Rs 115,693.95 crore from 10 global investors in the past two months. Investors include Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, TPG Capital, L Catterton and ADIA.
With this fund raising and the Rs 53,124.20 crore Reliance Industries raised via a Rights Issue, the company declared that it was net-debt free on Friday.
With PTI inputs