Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani began the 44th Annual General Meeting, held virtually, by announcing that the business and financial success since the last AGM has exceeded expectations during the pandemic.
Ambani pegged the consolidated revenue of the company at Rs 5,40,000 crores and consolidated EBITDA at Rs 90,000 crores, of which nearly 50 percent was contributed by consumer business.
The overall growth in net profits was recorded at Rs 53, 739 cores, a 34.8 percent increase in contrast with last year. "Despite the pandemic, we increased the dividends this year," Ambani said.
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Furthermore, at Rs 1,45,143 crore (US$ 19.9 billion) RIL retains the status of the country's largest exporter accounting for 6.8% of India's total merchandise exports across 107 countries.
Ambani added that the company raised exceeded Rs 3,24,432 crores (USD 44.4 billion). "For the FY2021, Reliance successfully carried out the largest ever capital raised by any company globally in a year, notwithstanding the COVID challenges," he said.
While announcing the retirement of Y P Trivedi from the Board of Directors, Ambani welcomed Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Chairman of Saudi Aramco and the Governor of the Public Investment Fund as an independent director on the Board of RIL.
"He is one of the most renowned names in energy finance and technology globally. I am sure that we will immensely benefit from his rich experience with one of the world's largest companies, and also one of the largest Sovereign Wealth Funds in the world," Ambani said adding that the move is the beginning of internationalisation of Reliance.
The 20 percent stake sale by the Indian conglomerate in its oil-to-chemical business had stalled due to the pandemic. Ambani had announced the deal at the 2019 annual general meeting (AGM), valuing the entire business at a whopping $75 billion.
In line with RIL's commitment to becoming net carbon zero by 2035, Ambani announced the establishment of the Reliance New Energy Council and pledges to invest Rs 60,000 crores in four gigafactories for green initiatives. Additionally, Rs 15,000 crore will be invested in value chain, partnerships and future technologies, including upstream
and downstream industries taking the total investment to Rs 75,000 crores in the next three years.
"I am pleased to announce today, that Reliance will establish and enable at least 100GW of solar energy by 2030. A significant part of this will come from rooftop solar and decentralised solar installations in villages. These will bring enormous benefits and prosperity to rural India," he announced.
In a significant and much-awaited announcement, Ambani revaled the JioPhone Next, a fully-featured smartphone co-developed by Jio and Google. "JioPhone Next is powered by an extremely optimised version of the Android Operating System, that has been jointly developed by JIO and Google, especially for the Indian market," Ambani noted adding that the phone is packed with "cutting-edge features like the voice assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, language translation, smart camera with augmented reality filters and much more."
Ambani also stated significant progress in collaboration businesses with Facebook explaining the response and feedback from WhatsApp and JioMart customers and the development of a new commerce solution that would link merchants and consumers. It is expected to launch in the next few quarters.
He als0 announced the operationalization of an initial 10 MW capacity of JIO-AZURE Cloud Data centres in Jamnagar and Nagpur, in collaboration with Microsoft. "We are indeed privileged to have partners like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, in whose company, our efforts to create a digital society in India seems that much easier," he said.
Declaring the success in the testing of homegrown 5G, Ambani noted that it successfully demonstrated speeds in excess of 1 GBPS. He further said that company plans to export JIO 5G solutions to other telecom operators across the world.
Speaking on Reliance Retail, Ambani said that the company added 1,500 new stores, the largest retail expansion undertaken by any retailer during the COVID-19 period, taking the total store count to 12,711. Additionally, the retail business created over 65,000 new jobs and now employs over 2 lakh people.
Ambani concluded by saying that Reliance will continue progress on the principles of investing in future technologies, investing in Indian talent,
and investing in India's growth opportunity, on which the company was founded.
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