Amazon would buy a 9.9% stake in India's Reliance Retail in talks

Amazon will join its global rivals Google and Facebook in funding one of Mukesh Ambani 's Indian Billionaire companies. The American e-commerce firm is in preliminary talks on 23 July 2020 to buy a 9.9% interest in Reliance Retail.

Reliance Retail, founded in 2006, is India's biggest retail chain. It serves more than 3.5 million customers per week (as of the beginning of this year) across its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 towns and cities throughout the country.

Reliance Industries, which is India's most profitable business and runs Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms, has refused to comment on the report. Amazon refused to comment, as well. The confirmed talks between Amazon and Reliance Retail come days after Ambani, who is the richest man in India, said several companies had expressed interest in supporting the retail chain. Ambani's other company, Reliance Jio Platforms, has raised more than $20 billion by selling 33% of its stake to more than a dozen investors, including Facebook , Google, Silver Lake and General Atlantic since April this year.

During the Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries earlier this month, Ambani said the company would "induce global partners and investors into Reliance Retail in the coming quarters.”

The new venture of Reliance Industries, JioMart, is becoming increasingly a new challenger for Amazon, which has invested more than $6.5 billion in its India business, and for Walmart's Flipkart in recent months. In April, Facebook said it had entered into a deal with Reliance Industries to explore ways to partner on serving 60 million Indian mom and pop shops. Morgan Stanley, who served as financial advisor to Jio Platforms' Reliance Industries deals, recently valued Reliance Retail at about $29 billion.

Both Amazon and Reliance Retail have also been engaged in a battle to buy a majority stake in Future Retail, India's second-largest retail chain, according to local media reports. Last year, Amazon spent more than $100 million in Future Coupons, a collective company owned by Future Retail, to gain a 49% stake. That investment, which gave Amazon a 3.58% stake in Future Retail, also gave it the right of first refusal to buy more stake in Future Retail both directly and through entities, according to the terms disclosed in a regulatory filing by the two companies. The two companies have also signed a "long-term partnership agreement" in which Future Retail sells certain products online via the marketplace of Amazon India.