Reliance Industries, the holding that owns Indian telecoms company and digital services provider Jio Platforms, has announced a planned $4.5 billion investment by Google. The U.S. technology and search giant joins big tech peers including Facebook in ploughing billions of dollars into the young Indian company that has rapidly gain market share in the giant south Asian economy.

Parent company Reliance Industries, whose core businesses are oil refinery and petrochemicals, is owned by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man. Jio Platforms was only spun out of Reliance as an independent company in 2019. But as owner of Jio, the country’s largest mobile network, it is already estimated to be India’s fourth most valuable company.

In April, Facebook acquired 9.99% of Jio Platforms for $6.1 billion and prior to Google’s investment, which will see it take a 7.7% stake, Reliance had sold 32.97% of the company for a total of $23 billion. The new equity sale will take the capital raised since April beyond $30 billion, with other investors including private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

Mr Ambani had promised to bring major global investors into Jio, which was only established as part of the Reliance Industries group four years ago. His strategy has been to improve the company’s technological capability and cut parent company Reliance’s net debt to zero from over $20 billion.

At the company’s annual meeting, Mr Ambani stated:

“Jio is now the undisputed leader in India, with the largest customer base, the largest share of data and voice traffic, and a world-class next generation broadband network.”

Jio’s phenomenal growth over the past four years has been achieved on an aggressive marketing strategy for cheap 4G data plans and various other incentives. That has attracted 388 million subscribers to its mobile network and broadband packages. The company plans a public listing within 5 years.

Google sees India as its next major growth market and plans to invest at least $10 billion in the country over the next 5 years. With the Chinese market largely shut off to western tech giants, India has moved sharply into focus. The giant nation is also set to become an interesting battle ground between the U.S. and Chinese tech giants, with both sets of companies aggressively competing for market share.