RIL chairman addressing the 43rd AGM of the company (File photo)
NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani addressed the company’s 43rd annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. Ambani welcomed Google as a strategic investor in Jio Platforms. Jio has singed a binding partnership and agreement under which Google will invest over Rs 33,737 crore for 7.7% stake in Jio Platforms.
This is the company’s first online annual general meet (AGM) in the wake of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
Here are the key points:
* Ambani announced that Jio will be developing a complete 5G solution from scratch; trials for this will be launched as soon as 5G spectrum is available.
* Using these technologies, we can create compelling solutions across multiple industry verticals like media, financial services, new commerce, education, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities, smart manufacturing & smart mobility: Mukesh Ambani
* Jio Platforms is conceived with vision of developing original, captive intellectual property, using which we can demonstrate transformative power of technology across multiple ecosystems – first in India, and then rest of world.
* RIL earlier this week launched JioMeet video conferencing app with unlimited free calling, which is being seen as rate war on rival Zoom.
* Ambani said India’s first cloud-based video conferencing app JioMeet has seen 5 million downloads within days of its launch.
* The target of capital raise for Jio Platforms is complete with onboarding of Google: Ambani
* Reliance is now truly a zero net debt company, well ahead of my goal of March 2021. It has an extremely strong Balance Sheet that will support growth plans for its three Hyper-Growth Engines — Jio, Retail and O2C: Ambani
* Ambani said Jio will connect half a billion mobile customers, a billion smart sensors and 50 million home and business establishments in the next three years.
* We have fully kick-started five accelerators of growth of digital connectivity: Mobile broadband, JioFiber, Jio’s enterprise broadband, broadband for SMEs, and Jio’s Narrowband Internet-of-Things (NBIoT): Mukesh Ambani
* RIL held its first online AGM and it promises to be a much bigger affair with a brand-new virtual platform which can log more than one lakh shareholders from 500 locations simultaneously.
* For easy onboarding of its shareholders, RIL has launched an educative Chatbot via Whatsapp number +91-79771-11111 to nuance processing of logging in, asking questions and voting on the resolution.
* Ambani had at the last AGM on August 12, 2019 announced plans to sell stake in RIL’s technology venture as well as in its oil-to-chemical (O2C) business to help become net debt-free by March 2021.
* The net debt-free status has been achieved much ahead of the deadline thanks to Rs 1.18 lakh crore amassed through the sale of 25.24 per cent in Jio Platforms Ltd – the unit that houses India’s youngest but largest telecom firm Jio Infocomm and apps – to likes of Facebook, and the country’s biggest rights issue of Rs 53,124 crore.
* The sale of a 20 per cent stake in O2C business, which comprises of its twin oil refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat and petrochemical assets, to Saudi Aramco for an asking of $15 billion has however dragged on, although RIL has said it is on track.
* In the past, RIL has talked about 500 million customers being within its reach. Jio currently has a base of around 388 million subscribers. “We will look for any further colour on Jio’s strategy to bring the next 100 million into the fold,” it said.
(With PTI inputs)
