This Nov 1, 2018, photo, shows the Google logo at their offices in Granary Square, London. (Alastair Grant / AP)

NEW DELHI - India’s Reliance Industries on Wednesday said Alphabet Inc’s Google will buy a 7.7 percent stake in its digital unit for US$4.5 billion, winning the backing of another US tech giant after Facebook Inc in late April.

With Google’s investment, strategic and financial investors have committed a total of 1.52 trillion rupees (US$20.22 billion) in the last few months, Reliance chairman and billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani said

With Google’s investment, strategic and financial investors have committed a total of 1.52 trillion rupees (US$20.22 billion) in the last few months, Reliance chairman and billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting hosted via a webcast.

Reliance’s digital unit Jio Platforms houses music and movie apps but its mainstay is telecoms firm Jio Infocomm - India’s largest mobile carrier with more than 387 million users.

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The Reliance-Google announcement comes just days after Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said his company would invest US$10 billion in India over the next five to seven years through equity deals and tie-ups.

The deal with Google will bolster Reliance’s lofty tech ambitions, such as building smart homes, using solutions similar to Amazon.com Inc’s Alexa voice assistant, connected cars and security systems.

The investment arms of chipmakers Qualcomm Inc’s and Intel Corp have also bought stakes in Jio Platforms this month, at a time India is preparing to auction 5G airwaves to telecoms service providers.

“Digital revolution marks the greatest transformation in the history of mankind,” Ambani told shareholders. “India must lead the change to create a better world. This is Jio’s purpose.”

Interest in Jio is high because it’s seen as a gateway to India’s large and growing online population -- second only to China’s.

Jio is at the center of the Indian tycoon’s ambition to transform his energy conglomerate into a homegrown technology behemoth akin to China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The Reliance share price was up three percent in the buildup to the presentation and has been setting new highs over the past few weeks.

Google’s backing further burnishes Jio’s credentials in its push to upend online retail, content streaming, digital payments, education and health care in a market of more than a billion people.

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Global tech leaders are looking for multiple ways to grab a slice of the Indian market, where millions of first-time internet users are added every month.

Jio Platforms offers the largest base of such users who are increasingly buying consumer goods online and downloading music and video, using cheap smartphones and Jio’s own cut-price data services.

“The bigger story is the market access to opportunities that Jio Platforms can provide these investors,” said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

“They are betting on the track record of Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani whose scaling up of diverse businesses from energy to retail to telecom has been nothing short of impressive,” Meena said via telephone from New Delhi.

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The flood of investments in Jio is closely tied to the number of internet users it has and the services it can market to them.

“Jio is already connecting them to the internet, providing them with content and just starting to do commerce. It’s a very good investment opportunity for global companies,” he said.

For Google, cloud computing is another important consideration, tech industry consultant Chetan Sharma said ahead of the announcement.

As a provider, “Google has been more reactive than proactive” in the country, he said, and “This gives them a leg in.”

The move would also support Google’s Android smartphone operating system and the company’s mobile payments push in the country, he added.