Facebook is negotiating multi-billion a deal to acquire some stakes in Reliance Jio. According to the Financial Times report, the California based social network giant is looking to buy a 10% share in Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio. The enormous debt of Jio leads to negotiating this deal, as this telecom company is planning to cut its debts to zero by March 2020, the report states. The deal was expected to complete in recent months. However, the Coronavirus outbreak has been impacted this deal, and the timetable has been postponed future.
Reliance Jio is one of the leading telecom providers in India. It emerged to prominence and acquired a major stake in Indian telecom during the popular demonetization bid in 2016. Currently, it has around 370 million users at comparatively lower prices than other major telecom services provider. Moreover, this telecom giant has the capability to compete with American tech giants. This proposed deal with Jio will give a greater opportunity to Facebook to expand its business in India. For Facebook, India is already a vast market with around 400 Million users of Whatsapp, an instant messaging service of Facebook except for its social network Facebook and Instagram.
The fast pace expansion of Jio and its venture in different retail markets through Jio also incurred massive debt. To achieve its target to reduce the overall debt burden, the Reliance group is also planning to sell a 20 percent share of its oil refining business to Saudia Arabia’s leading oil refinery company Aramco. This partnership of Jio and Facebook would be beneficial for both the companies to utilize the growing internet users in India.