Inside a $5.7 bn deal: Coronavirus couldn’t logout Facebook & Reliance from “Project Redwood”

MUMBAI: “Can I catch up on some sleep just for a few hours,” was the first message Anshuman Thakur typed to a senior colleague around on noon right after he finished a media call with Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s head in India.

Thakur, a former telecoms rainmaker at NM-Rothschild-and-Morgan Stanley-turned-head of Strategy and Planning at Reliance, had been up on the phone since 4 am, fine tuning the final raft of documents hours before Facebook announced its strategic $5.7 billion partnership with Reliance early on Wednesday early morning.