Reliance Industries Ltd. makes a corporate announcement

The definitive agreements valued the combined Viacom18–Star India joint venture at Rs 70,352 Crores on a post-money basis, excluding synergies. Reliance Industries committed a cash infusion of Rs 11,500 Crores into the JV for its growth strategy. ^[1]

This infusion secured Reliance’s controlling position: the post-transaction ownership was 16.34% for RIL, 46.82% for Viacom18 and 36.84% for Disney, with control resting with RIL. ^[1]

Reliance will fully consolidate the combined media entity, rather than account for it as an associate or on an equity-method basis. The transaction announcement explicitly states that RIL will operate and consolidate the joint venture. Although RIL held 16.34% directly at closing, the JV was controlled through the RIL-controlled Viacom18 stake; the remaining interests were held by Disney and other shareholders. Accordingly, the JV’s revenue, expenses, assets and liabilities would flow into RIL’s consolidated accounts, with the outside shareholders’ share reflected as non-controlling interest. ^[2]

EBITDA-margin impact

The merger announcement disclosed pro-forma combined revenue of approximately Rs 26,000 Crores for FY24, but did not provide a corresponding pro-forma EBITDA or EBITDA margin. ^[3] Therefore, the projected change in RIL’s Media & Entertainment EBITDA margin cannot be calculated reliably from the disclosed pro-forma revenue alone:

`Pro-forma EBITDA margin = pro-forma EBITDA / pro-forma revenue`

The post-merger operating figures show that JioStar’s margin is volatile rather than structurally fixed: EBITDA margin was 28.10% in Q2 FY26 and 9.60% in Q1 FY27, calculated on revenue from operations. ^[4] These are reported post-merger quarterly outcomes, not the merger filing’s pro-forma forecast, and should not be presented as the projected margin impact.

Implication: consolidation should increase the scale of RIL’s reported Media & Entertainment segment materially, but the merger filings cited here support a conclusion on accounting treatment and revenue scale, not a defensible quantified estimate of the segment’s pro-forma EBITDA-margin uplift or dilution.

The merger announcement shows a major expansion in scale, but a quantified uplift versus Viacom18 alone cannot be established from the cited annual-report figures. The announcement combines Viacom18’s media assets with Star India and Disney content, so its metrics are not standalone Viacom18 measures.

Analytical read: the combined platform added Star’s television and sports assets, Hotstar, and Disney’s licensed catalogue to Viacom18’s existing Colors, Sports18 and JioCinema ecosystem. The result is therefore broader in both content breadth and distribution reach, but the metrics mix different definitions: 30,000 Disney assets is a catalogue count, 30,000 hours is annual TV production, 50 million is a digital subscription base, and 750 million is viewer reach. They should not be added or treated as a single audience number.

The practical conclusion is that the announcement establishes substantial absolute scale and catalogue diversification, but not the precise percentage increase over Viacom18’s standalone FY24 library or subscriber base. A like-for-like bridge would require the Viacom18 annual report’s standalone definitions for content-library size, annual production hours, digital subscribers and viewer reach.

^[5][6]