The powerful enigma, Mukesh Ambani, needs no introduction. Under him, Reliance Industries grew from a textile, oil and energy company, into a giant conglomerate that now encompasses fashion, telecom, electronics, digital platforms and even grocery. With so many mergers and acquisitions undertaken by him in different parts of the world, the recent one being the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York, and before that the Stoke Park, he also has many other investments to his credit in various companies in India.
Mukesh Ambani has invested around INR 7,000 crore in startups in the country. Below are some promising startups that have either had investments or have been totally acquired by him.
1. Addverb Technologies
A tech company that uses robots to better e-commerce, warehouse and energy production, Ambani has invested around INR 984 crore for a majority stake in the company, in January 2022.
2. Dunzo
On-demand delivery app Dunzo received an investment of INR 1490 crore in January 2022, by Reliance Industries which is now a stake holder of 25.8% in the company. Dunzo, now competes with Amazon and Swiggy Instamart.
3. Netmeds
Reliance Retail Ventures, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries acquired a majority equity stake in online pharmacy delivery startup, Netmeds’ parent company Vitalic for approximately Rs 620 crore, in August 2020. The Mukesh Ambani-led group now owns a 60% stake in the Chennai-based company.
4. Radisys
On 30 June 2018, Reliance Industries acquired Radisys for INR 559 crore. Radisys is a US-based open telecom platform solutions provider. It now operates as an independent subsidiary.
5. Urban Ladder
Reliance Retail bought a 96% stake in the Bengaluru-based UrbanLadder from its then existing investors including Sequoia Capital India, Kalaari Capital, and Steadview Capital, by investing around INR182 crore, in November 2020
6. Grab
Mumbai-based hyperlocal logistics startup Grab a Grub Services was acquired by Reliance Industries for INR 146 crore, in February 2019.
7. C-Square
To boost its e-commerce business, RIL acquired an 82% majority stake in the Bengaluru-based software solutions firm C-Square. The software company was bought for INR 82 crore, on a fully diluted basis.
8.Embibe
Embibe is an Artificial Intelligence-powered learning platform founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Aditi Awasthi. Reliance acquired 73% stake in the startup in April 2018. Embibe then raised funding of INR 90 crore from RIL, after which it acquired the next company we are going to talk about.
9. Funtoot
Funtoot, a Bengaluru-based edtech startup was acquired by Embibe, in return for a 90.5% stake, in December 2019, for INR 74 crore.
10. Aesteria
Another Bengaluru-based startup to have been acquired by Reliance Industries Ltd, Asteria is a robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) company, which develops drones that are mostly used by the military, paramilitary, and police forces in India. RIL acquired a 51.78% equity share worth INR 23.12 crore.
11. NowFloats
NowFloats Technologies, a Hyderabad-based homegrown SaaS start-up, was acquired by Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, in 2019. For a sum of INR 141 crore with a majority stake of 85 percent holding in the equity share capital of the brand.
Apart from these, RIL has made heavy investments amounting to INR 746 crore in the AI-based conversational platform Haptik. Also, Fynd, a fashion e-commerce platform received investments amounting to INR 295 crore. And Saavn received an investment of about INR 775 crore.
Also, RIL has invested undisclosed amounts in startups like Tesseract, EasyGov, SankhyaSutra Labs, Milkbasket, and Zivame in the past 3 years.
