CCI approves Google’s acquisition of 7.73% stake of RIL’s Jio Platforms
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Thursday approved the acquisition of 7.73% equity share capital of Jio Platforms Limited (JPL) by Google International LLC.
Google LLC is a Delaware limited liability company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. GIL is a holding company and does not own/operate any of Google’s products/ services.
Meanwhile, JPL is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, which holds the majority of its issued equity share capital.
Earlier in July 2020, RIL signed a binding agreement with Google where the latter will invest Rs 33,737cr in the former’s Jio Platforms. The largest search engine’s investment will translate into 7.73% equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis.
These two behemoths seek to expand the benefits of digitization across the length and breadth of India, beyond the current 500+ million Internet users in the country.
Further, Google has also entered into a commercial agreement with Jio Platforms for jointly developing an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimizations to the Android operating system and the Play Store.