Silver Lake, the well-known and well-funded private equity firm, announced earlier this week that they would invest 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about USD$747 million) in Jio Platforms, the largest Indian-based telecommunications company and also the owner of various consumer digital services, such as their music platform. Just two weeks ago Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio, which is owned by Reliance Industries, the largest private sector company in India.

I spoke with Gaurav Mehta, Managing Director and Head of India for The Raine Group, a merchant bank advising and investing in high growth sectors of technology and media, who said, “I was pleasantly surprised by the Silver Lake investment as they have not been active in India before this.”

I also spoke with Rahul Chowdhri, Co-Founder and Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, an early stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based in India. He echoed Mehta’s pleasure with the Silver Lake investment in Jio, saying, “It is great to see Silver Lake making a large investment in India.” Chowdhri said that Jio was actively seeking to, “grow from being predominantly a telecommunications company, to a company more involved in digital content, services and e-commerce.” The Silver Lake and Facebook investments increase the opportunities for Jio to expand its digital offerings.

Silver Lake has also invested heavily in Unity Technologies, the software technology company that supports the design of games, as well as other applications such as architecture and advertising agencies. Other digital investments by Silver Lake include Ant Financial owned by Alibaba BABA, as well as Didi, the ride share service. Both are Chinese companies.

Silver Lake has also invested billions of dollars in Twitter, Expedia, Airbnb, and Waymo – all well-established digital companies. Silver Lake has also made a number of investments in the Hollywood talent-agency, WME, and IMG, the sports management company. The two companies combined in 2013, with Silver Lake as a significant minority owner. Silver Lake has become a major investor in internet companies, as well as media/entertainment companies such as WME and IMG.

Many private equity firms buy the entire company when they make an acquisition or at least a controlling portion. However, Silver Lake has made a number of minority investments in some of the best known digital enterprises in the U.S. and abroad.

The investment in Jio Platforms by Silver Lake reflects the importance of India in the nations that make up the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries. These countries are powerhouses of growth. India’s GDP is $3.2 trillion, which puts them in the number 5 position across the world’s economies. Income for the average household has been growing regularly. India’s population is 1.4 billion people, which makes them the 2nd most populous country in the World. India has worked hard to improve their educational system, at all levels, and are turning out many highly-trained and well-educated citizens. The Indian Government is also providing incentives and encouragement to start-ups and entrepreneurs in their country.

India is a huge emerging market and Silver Lake is only one of many major investors in the Indian economy. Many of the best known American brands are very active in India, reaching out to the huge consumer population in India.

Mehta commented on the growing American corporate involvement in India, “Major operating companies from the U.S. have been very active in building their own businesses and acquiring existing companies in India, or making majority investments such as Walmart WMT’s acquisition of two-thirds of Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce company.” Raine co-advised on this deal.

Chowdhri said that “long-term I expect the U.S. private equity funds and venture capital funds to increase their involvement in India.”

Silver Lake issued a statement quoting their co-chief executive and managing partner, saying Jio has “brought extraordinary engineering capabilities to bear on bringing the power of low-cost digital services to a mass consumer and small businesses population. The market potential they are addressing is enormous, and we are honored and pleased to have been invited to partner with Mukesh Ambani (the Chairman of Reliance) and the team at Reliance and Jio to help further the Jio mission.”