By Team CR
RNT Capital Advisors, a company founded by Ratan Tata, will invest $150 million in Ant Finance Services, an affiliate of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, the Economic Times reported on Friday.
According to the report, Ant Financial Services, which is considered the world’s most highly valued private technology company, will also receive $10-12 billion funding from the investment arm of the University of California, which will increase its value beyond Uber. While Uber is valued at $70 billion, Ant Financial Services is reportedly valued at $150 billion.
At the $150-billion valuation, UC-RNT Fund will get about a 0.1% stake in Ant Financial.
The expected valuation is a significant jump for Ant Financial, which is likely to go for a public offering by next year, and was valued at $60 billion during its last funding round in 2016.
UC-RNT Fund has earlier backed companies like ride-hailing app Ola in a $100-million round. Other investments include mobile point of-sales solutions company Mswipe and healthcare startup Curefit.
The proposed investment in Ant Financial will be the first known investment outside India for the UCRNT Fund. According to a Bloomberg report, Alipay, the digital payment product from Ant Financial, clocks up $2.4 trillion worth of mobile payments every three months and has 870 million customers.
This is the second time Ratan Tata he is backing one of China’s top technology companies. In 2015, he had made a personal investment through RNT Associates in smartphone maker Xiaomi.