The Reliance Retail investment proposition

Why read this story?

Editor's note: Private equity firm TPG Capital looks like the next one to jump on the Reliance Retail investment bandwagon, to the tune of $1 billion, ET Prime reports. Earlier this month, blue chip private equity investment firm KKR invested Rs 5,550 crore ($750 million) in the company at a valuation of Rs 421,000 crore ($56 billion). Both the money coming in and the valuation are serious numbers. A casual reader of this development might say, well, we’ve seen this coming, haven’t we? First it was Jio Platforms, the holding company for Reliance Industries Ltd’s telecom and digital services businesses, which raised about $20 billion from TPG, Facebook, Google and more, and now it is the turn of the retail arm. Two fundamental questions:  Why is Reliance diluting its holdings in this business?Are the prospects of its retail unit bright or dim? The fact of the matter is, the retail business is a very different animal compared to most other ideas from Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, and the richest man in Asia.  In the past five …