At the 44th annual general meeting of Reliance Industries Ltd., Mukesh Ambani announced the company's mega investment in a new business - green energy, said the deal with Saudi Aramco would close this year, promised the launch of the Jio-Google phone in September and 5G soon, and updated on the digital and retail businesses.
At the start of the AGM, most of the Ambani family took to stage one by one. Mukesh, chairman and managing director, began by introducing the board and company officials, children Akash and Esha followed, paying tributes to Covid frontline staff and wife Nita, also a RIL director, spoke about the various initiatives of the foundation. It was well into 30 minutes of the meeting when Ambani began to share his views on the business.
Here are five key takeaways:
1. Aramco Deal In FY22
Discussions with Saudi Aramco, one of the world's largest energy and chemicals companies, have made "subsantial progress", said Ambani. The deal has been pending for over a year now.
"I expect our partnership to be formalised in an expeditious manner this year."
He also announced that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of Saudi Aramco and the governor of the Public Investment Fund, will join the RIL board as an independent director.
His joining our board is also the beginning of internationalisation of Reliance. You will hear more about our international plans in the times to come.
Click here for more on the Aramco deal and its implications for RIL's O2C business.
2. Mega New Green Energy Business
Ambani announced that RIL will venture into a new energy business with the "aim of bridging the green energy divide in India and globally".
The company aims to build four giga factories to manufacture and integrate critical components at an investment of Rs 60,000 crore over the next three years.
solar photovoltaic module factory
energy storage battery factory
electrolyser factory
fuel cell factory
This will be done at the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar.
"Jamnagar was the cradle of our old energy business. Jamnagar will also be the cradle of our new energy business," said Ambani.
The company said it will also invest Rs 15,000 crore in value chain, partnerships and future technologies, including upstream and downstream industries.
The overall investment in the new energy business will be Rs 75,000 crore in three years, according to Ambani.
We will transform our legacy business into sustainable, circular and net zero carbon materials business. We will do this by repurposing our existing assets to extend their economic life and earning capacity.
Read more on RIL's new energy plans here.
Promotional image of JioPhone Next. (Image: Jio)
Promotional image of JioPhone Next. (Image: Jio)
3. 'JioPhone Next' In September
At last year's AGM , Ambani announced a fully loaded but low-cost smartphone being developed in collaboration with Google. At this year's AGM he promised the phone would launch in September.
Here's how he described it:
fully-featured smartphone.
supports entire suite of applications from Google, Jio, Android Play Store.
powered by an Android OS, jointly developed by Jio and Google.
includes features like voice assistant, automatic read-aloud, language translation, smart camera with augmented reality filters, etc...
JioPhone Next will be available in the market from the auspicious date of Ganesh Chaturthi, Sept. 10 this year. And as you have come to expect from Jio, it is my promise that JioPhone Next will be by far, among the most affordable smartphone not just in India, but globally.
4. 5G Launch Soon...
Reliance Jio will be the first to launch 5G, claimed Ambani, but he didn't detail when. 5G plans featured in last year's AGM speech as well.
The company recently received regulatory approvals and trial spectrum for 5G field trials.
"We have tested the Jio 5G solutions in India and we successfully demonstrated speeds well in excess of 1 GBPS," he said, adding that the company is now working with partners to develop a full range of 5G-capable devices.
Once Jio's 5G solution is proven at India-scale, we are excited by the prospect of exporting Jio 5G solutions to other telecom operators across the world.
5. JioMart To Add One Crore Kirana Partners
Reliance Retail's partnership with kirana stores added 3 lakh shops across 150 cities last year. JioMart registered over 6.5 lakh peak orders in a single day, said Ambani.
The goal is to add 1 crore partners over the next three years, he said.
The retail business will focus on:
product development capabilities.
strengthen sourcing ecosystem.
linking all major sourcing and consumption locations.
automated, modular, reliable and scalable warehousing and logistics ecosystem.
expanding store footprint multi-fold this year.
acquiring businesses.
I am confident that Reliance Retail is on a hyper growth trajectory to grow at least 3x in the next 3-5 years.
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