Reliance Retail Ventures, a big company owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, is having serious discussions with global investors. They want to get around $2.5 billion in investments by the end of September. They’re thinking about doing this before they possibly start selling their shares on the stock market. This info comes from people who know about the situation and talked to Reuters.
These sources also mentioned that Reliance Retail is aiming to raise a total of $3.5 billion. Part of this, which is $1 billion, already came from the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and this was announced last month.
Reliance sent an email where they said they don’t usually talk about what the media says, but they do look at different opportunities all the time.
Last month, Reliance said they got $1 billion from QIA, and it made the company worth $100 billion. Reliance Retail is India’s biggest retailer. They do everything from selling groceries to electronics. They also have partnerships with brands from other countries, like Burberry and Pret A Manger.
Morgan Stanley is helping Reliance with this process, according to two sources who know about it. Morgan Stanley didn’t say anything when they were asked about this.
The sources didn’t say who these new investors might be, but one source did mention that Reliance is talking to at least two investors from the United States. The other two sources said that investors who have already put money into Reliance before, including some government-owned funds, are showing more interest.
If this investment actually happens, it would show that India is still attractive to Western private investors. These investors have been staying away from China because of the country’s economy getting worse and because of tensions between different countries.
In 2020, Reliance Retail got $5.71 billion by selling a 10.09% part of the company to investors. Some of these investors were KKR, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, General Atlantic, and Mubadala from the United Arab Emirates.
Mukesh Ambani, who is the owner of Reliance, said this week that in 2020, the company was worth about $52 billion. He also said that in less than three years, the value of the retail business has almost doubled.
Another source, who knows a lot about this, said that there will be two announcements about investments by Reliance in the next two weeks. The value of the company will be about the same as when QIA put in money, which is around $100 billion. This means that if there’s a $2.5 billion investment, it will be like getting a 2.5% part of the company.
Ambani mentioned this week that many big global investors are very interested in Reliance Retail, but he didn’t give any more details.
Ambani also said in 2019 that they want to start selling shares of the retail business in five years.
His daughter, Isha Ambani, is in charge of making the retail business bigger. Right now, Reliance Retail has over 18,000 stores, and they’re also getting bigger in online sales, where they’re competing with companies like Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart.
For the financial year that ended in March 2023, Reliance Retail made a profit of 91.81 billion Indian rupees, which is about $1.11 billion, and they had revenue of 2.6 trillion rupees.
Since last year, Reliance Retail has been getting more grocery and non-food brands to make their business better. They want to have a business that makes $6 billion in sales every year in five years. This will help them challenge big foreign companies like Unilever.