RIL's Bonus Bonanza: A boost for retail investors as Mukesh Ambani unveils bold plans

Beyond new-age technology, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani emphasised the company's ongoing commitment to innovation and sustainability

Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) has set the stage for a significant market sentiment boost by announcing its consideration of a 1:1 bonus share issue at its upcoming board meeting on September 5. This move, designed to be investor-friendly, will enhance liquidity and make RIL shares more accessible to retail investors by halving the current share price post-bonus. Issuing bonus shares, while not increasing market capitalisation, sends a strong signal of the management's confidence in the company's future and its ability to service the expanded equity base.

The optimism from RIL's management is rooted in a series of strategic initiatives to drive future growth. During the company's Annual General Meeting (AGM) today, Chairman Mukesh Ambani highlighted the remarkable progress in various business segments. He revealed that JioAirFiber has already secured its first million customers within just 100 days and is poised to add another million homes every 30 days, with a target of 100 million home broadband customers.

In addition, Jio's 5G rollout was celebrated as a transformative success, with Jio leading India from being 5G-dark to 5G-bright. Over 130 million customers have adopted Jio True 5G in just two years. JioTV was also introduced, offering a seamless entertainment experience by combining live TV, on-demand shows, and apps like Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar in one platform.

Beyond new-age technology, Mukesh Ambani also emphasised the company's ongoing commitment to innovation and sustainability, noting that RIL filed over 2,555 patents in the past year, focusing on bio-energy, solar power, green energy, and high-value chemicals.

Mukesh Ambani's speech was also focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ambani said that the true power of AI lies in making it accessible to everyone, everywhere. Jio's AI Everywhere For Everyone vision is committed to democratising AI, offering powerful AI models and services to everyone in India at the most affordable prices. Reliance is laying the groundwork for a national AI infrastructure to achieve this.

Reliance plans to establish gigawatt scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, powered entirely by Reliance's green energy.

Ambani said that Reliance is leveraging its infrastructure, networking, operations, software, and data expertise and collaborating with global partners to create the world's lowest AI inferencing cost in India. This will make AI applications in India more affordable than anywhere else, making AI accessible to all.

Ambani also announced that Jio is set to roll out 'Jio Cloud' by Diwali this year. As a welcome offer, users will get 100 GB of free cloud storage as a way to securely store and access all their photos, videos, documents, other digital content, and data.

This dedication to cutting-edge technology and sustainable growth underscores RIL's strategic vision for the future, further solidifying investor confidence and justifying the generous bonus issue to a large extent.

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