Jio-Facebook Deal: A Lurking Peril on the Competition

Ananya Garg and Kushagra Goyal
Amity Law School Delhi, GGSIP University, India

Volume II – Issue I, 2020

Reliance- Jio snared India’s largest FDI deal in the tech industry with the 9.99% stake vended to Facebook  for a whooping sum of Rs. $5.7 billion. This is the largest minority investment by any tech giant worldwide and this deal can prove to be a game changer in India’s telecoms, media and entertainment sectors. The deal gives Reliance Jio an implied valuation of $57 billion. In a country like India whose economy is largely data-driven, the deal could prove to be colossal as both Reliance and Jio have an evidently massive dominant position and expansive network of impact. The two giant companies combined hold access to the enormous amount of data which can be put to impairment of the other existing companies. While the assortment and usage of personal data descent under the dominion of data protection laws, however, a question that is now being scrutinized by numerous competition law watchdogs is that whether the use of data and data agreements can impact competition in the markets. Reliance Jio which had earlier accosted the Competition Commission of India for a green flag was successful in procuring approval from the authorities. The aim of this article is to analyse the impact and repercussion of this deal on the competition of India as well as discuss necessity of inclusion of data as a relevant factor in effecting the competition in the contemporary world of digitization, the ramification it can have on the Indian economic system in the long run.

 

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