The year 2022 witnessed several key developments in the world of Indian business, and top among them is that the year marks two decades since Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani became chairman of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector corporation.
Taking over the RIL chairmanship at the passing of his father and Reliance Founder, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh Ambani has, over these past 20 years, carved out a reputation for himself as a global businessman willing to take the big bets and make the pivots necessary to turn Reliance that ranked 104th in the 2022 Fortune Global 500 list into a global tour de force.
At the same time, this iconic corporate titan — whose grit and resilience were in full view many times over the past 20 years, recently when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020 — has proved himself adept in retaining a sense of continuity at RIL while embarking on a large-scale, strategic transformation of the company. Chiefly in terms of the firm’s unwavering attention year-on-year on creating more and more wealth not just for shareholders but for India, too, in the highest traditions of stakeholder capitalism.
Predominantly focused on petrochemicals when he took control, RIL, under Mukesh Ambani, is, today, a more diversified entity with business interests now spanning across the telecom, retail, clean energy, and entertainment domains, among others. It is already the market leader in several of these new business segments, importantly in the high growth potential telecom and retail sectors.
Incidentally, the retail business is currently the second-biggest revenue contributor to Reliance after oil-to-chemicals (O2C). From a value point of view, the diversification measures undertaken under Mukesh Ambani’s watch have pushed up the market capitalisation of Reliance from Rs 4,28,909 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 17,81,841 crore as on March 31, 2022 proving how effective the tactical shift has been.
This calendar year saw Reliance acquire the Indian operations of German wholesaler Metro Cash & Carry that is likely to add further power to its retail venture.
Additionally, the company launched 5G telecom services, besides making a foray into the FMCG arena this year, among various other initiatives, in a manifest demonstration of Reliance’s steadfast intent to keep developing newer revenue streams in line with its ambitious growth agenda.
Though early days yet for its clean energy business, the announcements made on this front at Reliance’s 45th AGM on August 29 about the establishment of a new giga factory for power electronics and development of a battery manufacturing ecosystem showed just how serious the organisation is about pushing the needle in the clean energy manufacturing arena, which China currently dominates.
All great businesses worldwide whose legacies have outlasted the people who started the enterprises have been able to do so owing to the putting in place of robust and sustainable systems and processes. In this regard, the announcements made at the company’s AGM this year about the establishment of a strong institutional mechanism at Reliance clearly indicated how dearly this Indian corporate giant values global best practices where organisation interests come before everything else and stood out as a fantastic testimony to the farsightedness of Mukesh Ambani.
A country like India with aspirations of becoming a developed nation needs its capital creators to step up in a big way for this purpose. All the while at Reliance, Mukesh Ambani has always dared to dream big and then worked hard to convert that dream into a reality because of his unswerving belief in India and the people of this nation. It is hoped that 2023 would continue to see Reliance scale higher peaks under Mukesh Ambani’s leadership and, in the process, be an exemplar of how corporate groups can hasten the progress of a nation.
Sumali Moitra is a current affairs commentator. Twitter: @sumalimoitra. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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