Description-: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Monday announced a Rs 2.75 lakh crore investment plan to expand and diversify his $221 billion empire by rolling out 5G services from October, adding capacity in the core oil and chemical business and taking on rival Gautam Adani with a foray into FMCG sector.
Succession plans-: Retail to Isha, energy to Anant
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Monday laid bare the succession plan at India’s most valuable company, identifying twins children Akash and Isha for telecom and retail leadership, and youngest son Anant for the new energy unit. He, however, insisted he isn’t retiring yet and will “continue to provide hands-on leadership as before”.
Telecommunication and Technology-:
Jio said it is committed to spending $25 billion to launch 5G services. The first phase of the rollout will be done by October this year and will cover key cities of the country including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata.
- AirFiber-: The company unveiled the AirFiber: a wireless plug-and-play 5G hotspot that doesn’t require fiber cables, which offers a personal Wi-Fi hotspot at home or offices at the same time.
How does it work? For any AirFibers, a small antenna is placed on one’s building that receives a direct signal from one of Reliance’s towers nearby. The connection from one’s location and the tower allows for fast reliable service via a fixed wireless connection. This prevents interrupted data which is common with cellular or wired internet connections.
- Jio Cloud PC-: It is a thin device with a pay-for-what-you-use model. Consumers can get the Jio virtual PC with no upfront investments or upgrades. The company stated that Jio True 5G and its other services will be useful for various industries and sectors, such as agriculture, healthcare and education.
How does it work? The Jio Cloud PC will be a virtual PC hosted in the cloud. This is likely to be compact hardware (just like a router) with one HDMI, four USB, one LAN and a 3.5mm port and will have to be connected with a display, keyboard and mouse.
- Reliance announced its partnership with Meta for immersive technology, Google to develop ultra-affordable 5G smartphones and ‘Google Cloud’; Microsoft for Azure ecosystem, vibrant ecosystem of cloud-enabled business applications and solutions; Intel for Cloud-scale data centres and 5G edge locations; and Qualcomm to broaden their joint collaborations.
3. FMCG
- WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Meta Platforms, is rolling out a shopping product in India, the first time users will be able to browse and purchase groceries and other household products without leaving the app. WhatsApp unveiled the new tool alongside JioMart, part of Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms, a tech company that Meta invested almost $6 billion into in early 2020.
- Reliance to enter FMCG business this year, partner 1 crore merchants in 5 years. The country’s largest retailer Reliance Industries on Monday announced that it will enter the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) business this year as part of its expansion plan. Addressing the 45th AGM of Reliance Industries on Monday, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) director Isha Ambani said: “This year, we will launch our FMCG goods business”.
4. Energy-:
- “Reliance is actively working on bio-energy. I am happy to inform you that Reliance has inaugurated Phase I of its Bio-Energy Technology (BET) Centre at Jamnagar on August 15, 2022,” Mukesh Ambani said in his speech.
- “We aim to progressively commence transition from Grey Hydrogen to Green Hydrogen by 2025, after proving our cost and performance targets,” said Mukesh Ambani during his AGM speech.
- “We see batteries as an integral part of providing long-duration energy storage…We aim to start production of battery packs by 2023 and scale up to a fully integrated 5 GWh annual cell to pack manufacturing facility by 2024, and further scale up to 50 GWh annual capacity by 2027,” Mukesh Ambani said.
- For solar PV manufacturing, we have acquired REC Solar. Our 10GW solar PV cell and module factory at Jamnagar, based on REC technology, will commence production by 2024 and scale up to 20GW capacity by 2026: Mukesh Ambani said.
5. Institutions-: Isha Ambani announced the launch of two institutions by Reliance Foundation: Jio Institute and Nita Mukesh Ambani Junior School as an expansion of Dhirubhai Ambani International School.
6. O2C-: Reliance Industries (RIL) will invest Rs 75,000 crore over the next five years in its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business and expand capacities in existing and new value chains, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Monday during the company’s annual general meeting (AGM). Addressing its shareholders, Ambani laid out a three-pronged strategy to maximise O2C integration and convert existing feedstock streams into high-value chemicals and green materials. Tapping the polyester and vinyl value chains would constitute the first two areas of investment, Ambani said. The third would be setting up the world’s largest carbon-fiber plant at Hazira with a capacity of 20,000 million tonnes per annum (MTPA).
