Reliance AGM 2022: Mukesh Ambani Announces Rollout Of Jio 5G Services By Diwali

Our company became India’s first corporate to cross $100 billion in annual revenues; Reliance’s consolidated revenues grew 47 per cent to Rs 7.93 lakh crore, or $104.6 billion, says Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries.

Source : Getty

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani on Monday delivered his keynote address at the 45th annual general meeting (AGM) of RIL, India's largest company in terms of market capitalisation. 

During his blockbuster opening speech, Ambani announced the launch of Jio 5G services in India. By Diwali 2022, Jio 5G will be rolled out in the metro cities across the country. "Using 5G, we can accelerate the roll out of top quality, highly affordable fixed broadband services," Mukesh Ambani said, adding that "Jio 5G will be the world's most advanced 5G," he said, while adding, "Subsequently, we plan to increase the Jio 5G footprint month after month. By December 2023, which is less than 18 months from today, we will deliver Jio 5G to every town, every taluka, and every tehsil of our country."

Ambani, in his spech, said that Jio 5G will connect over 100 million homes with “unparalleled digital experiences and Smart Home solutions."

"We will catapult tens of millions of small merchants and small businesses to great heights, empowering them with cutting-edge, plug-and-play solutions delivered from the Cloud," he mentioned.

With Jio 5G, Reliance will connect everyone, everyplace and everything with the highest quality and most affordable data, Ambani said. 

"We have indigenously developed an end-to-end 5G stack which is fully cloud native, software deined, digitally managed, with support for even advanced features like Quantum Security. This is fully developed in-house by our 2,000-plus young Jio engineers, working tirelessly for the past three years. We have already deployed this Made-In-India 5G stack in our network, with sufficient capacity to serve hundreds of millions of users right from day one. Furthermore, Jio 5G is uniquely positioned to offer captive or private 5G solutions for Indian enterprises at owner's economics," he added.

"We are privileged to have world’s leading tech companies as partners in our ‘Made in India’ 5G collaboration," Ambani said as he mentioned Meta, Google, Microsoft, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and Cisco. He also announced a partnership with Qualcomm. "Today, I announce exciting partnership with Qualcomm," he added.

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announced his company's partnership with JioMart in India. With this tie-up between Meta and Reliance Jio, users would be able to buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat on the world's most popular messaging platform WhatsApp. Zuckerberg made the announcement on his official Facebook page

The RIL CMD pointed out, "Our company became India’s first corporate to cross $100 billion in annual revenues. Reliance’s consolidated revenues grew 47 per cent to Rs 7.93 lakh crore, or $104.6 billion."

Reliance has also committed a total investment of Rs 2 lakh crore for 'standalone, true' 5G network rollout.

Other than Jio 5G, Ambani said amidst global crisis, India stands out as beacon of growth and stability. "There is severe economic stress in many parts of world; uncertainty due to heightened geopolitical tensions, global risks."

Akash Ambani, chairman of Jio, said, "True 5G delivers breakthrough increases in broadband speed and drastically lowers latency. We don’t get 1 Gbps even on many of the fixed broadband networks in our country."

On the Reliance Retail space, Mukesh Ambani said, “Reliance Retail on achieving a record of Rs 2 lakh crore turnover and an Ebitda of Rs 12,000 crore. Today, Reliance Retail is among the Top-10 Retailers in Asia."

Isha Ambani, director of Reliance Retail, said the company had last year served "Over 200 million registered customers", which is equivalent to the collective population of the UK, France, and Italy, at Reliance Retail's physical stores and digital platforms.

"We welcomed 520 million walk-ins to our stores, growth of 18 per cent YoY, and 4.5 billion visits to our digital platforms, up 2.3x YoY," she said. She also announced WhatsApp-JioMart tie-up.

"JioMart and WhatsApp partnership will help growth. JioMart-WhatsApp users can use WhatsApp pay, cash on delivery and other payment methods," she said during the AGM.

On the oil and gas business section, Mukesh Ambani said that with 19 million standard cubic meters per day of production in ultra-deepwater fields, KG-D6 is contributing 20 per cent of India's domestic gas production. "With the commissioning of the MJ Field by end-2022, KG-D6 will increase its contribution to nearly 30 per cent of India's gas production. This will help meet India's growing demand indigenously, leading to import savings of nearly $9 billion/annum."

Reliance will also invest Rs 75,000 crore in petrochemicals and textile business, while Ambani announced Giga factory for power electronics.

In the green energy space, REC Solar is expanding its current 1.2 GW annual module capacity to 1.8 GW in Singapore. Solar PV tech constantly evolving; the aim is to extend PV module life to 50 years from 25 years. "In addition to solar energy, we are also actively progressing on bio-energy, offshore wind and other non-conventional forms of renewable energy, and will continue to expand our manufacturing ecosystem," said Mukesh Ambani.

"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," he mentioned.

At the end of the AGM, Ambani pointed out, "Our next-gen leaders are confidently taking over the reins across businesses. Akash and Isha have assumed leadership roles in Jio and Retail respectively. They have been passionately involved in our consumer businesses since inception. Anant has also joined our New Energy business with great zeal. In fact, he is spending most of his time in Jamnagar."

In his concluding remarks, Ambani added, "I have always believed that the interests of an institution must always override those of any individual or family. Keeping this in mind, we will create a robust architecture for tomorrow's Reliance to ensure that it remains a united, well-integrated and secure institution even as we develop our existing businesses and add new growth engines."