Reliance Industries Ltd – Twimbit DX 2021 Rank 1
Outcome
Key highlights
Introduction
Reliance Industries Limited is a leading Indian conglomerate established in 1973. Today, the firm’s core business verticals, such as refinery, petrochemicals and Oil and Gas, which contributed 95% of its overall group revenues in FY2015, are slowly being disrupted by its retail and digital arms. The company added the retail arm (Reliance Retail Limited) to diversify away from core industrials to consumer-facing businesses in 2006. Today, Reliance Retail contributes 23.1% of the company’s overall revenues and is a key growth engine for the conglomerate.
Transformation
In 2017, Reliance Industries Chairman and CEO Mukesh Ambani said, “The foundation of the fourth industrial revolution is connectivity and data. Data is the new natural resource. We are at the beginning of an era where data is the new oil.”
Since then, Jio has transformed the story and strategy of Reliance. The company has been on the path to pave the way for its expansion into new industry verticals beyond the traditional industrial businesses since 2006.
The company launched its retail arm, Reliance Retail Limited, in 2006 to forge entry into India’s organised retail sector. It added the telecom arm a decade later in 2016. These moves have swiftly diversified the group’s overall revenues from domination by its Industrials businesses (oil, refinery and petrochemicals) to new growth areas in retail and digital.
In FY2015, c.93% of the company’s overall revenues came from the traditional core (Industrial’s businesses), whereas in FY2020, c.30% came from the retail and digital arms.
Jio Platforms is the company’s flagship digital venture. The firm constituted Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited in 2007 and, in 2019, created Reliance Jio Platforms Limited and transferred the Infocomm unit and its entire assets to this new holding company. Subsequently, the company raised roughly USD 20 billion from marquee and strategic investors like KKR, Mubadala, Google, Facebook, Intel, Qualcomm and others to re-capitalise the firm and make the new digital venture net debt-free.