RIL is building one of world’s largest manufacturing ecosystems for green energy, says Mukesh Ambani

RIL is building one of world’s largest manufacturing ecosystems for green energy, says Mukesh Ambani

Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman Mukesh Ambani said RIL is building one of the world’s largest manufacturing ecosystem for green energy.

“We are building one of the world’s largest manufacturing ecosystems for green and clean energy. It covers solar, batteries, hydrogen, bio-energy and much more. This is our contribution to saving planet Earth from the looming climate crisis,” Ambani said in an interview with McKinsey’s Gautam Kumra.

Ambani cited RIL’s emphasis on building “businesses of the future”, be it polyester or 4G.

“At the beginning of building any new business, we ask ourselves: “What is the most critical need for India’s development, and how can we fulfill it at scale and over a long arc of time?” That remains a fundamental piece of Reliance. We also have no hesitation in believing we can build businesses of the future. With our experience, we can extrapolate the future 20 years from today. That’s why we didn’t hesitate to build polyester first or to build 4G before its time. The same is now true about our newest business venture in new energy,” said Ambani.

Reliance will turn 50 in 2027, but Ambani says the goal is to serve India for a century. “I want Reliance to continue to serve India and humanity even after completing 100 years. And I am confident it will.”

The group’s transformation over the decades, from polyester to petrochemicals, telecom and now green energy, has been driven by bold bets, none bigger than Jio. In 2016, Reliance invested $25 billion to enter a highly competitive telecom market.

The RIL CMD said the conglomerate has always taken big risks because scale is important to them.

“The biggest risk we have taken so far was Jio. At the time, it was our own money that we were investing, and l was the majority shareholder. Our worst-case scenario was that it might not work out financially because some analysts thought India wasn’t ready for the most advanced digital technology. But l told my board, “In the worst case, we will not earn much return. That’s okay because it’s our own money, said Ambani.