Reliance Industries Limited AGM 2024

Reliance Industries Limited held its 47th Annual General Meeting on August 29, 2024. Chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani addressed shareholders and shared his vision for the company over the next five years.

The publicly traded conglomerate, whose business interests include energy, petrochemicals, and entertainment, has become the first Indian company to achieve an annual revenue of Rs. 4 lakh crore.

• Reliance aims to boost AI adoption with Jio, develop generative AI models, launch Jio AI Cloud services, and introduce features like AI-driven phone call transcription and language translation.
• The company is investing heavily in green energy, securing land for solar and power generation projects and planning to supply solar energy starting in 2026.
• Reliance's retail sector is set for 2x growth, and its partnership with Disney creates a major media force. The company also launched Jio Financial Services and announced a bonus share.

Here are some of the main highlights from the event regarding the future plans of the company:

1. Riding the AI wave: Jio plans to go big on AI and wants to drive faster AI adoption across the company's various operations. It is working on building powerful generative AI models by partnering with global tech companies and wishes to deploy them soon at an affordable rate. It has already set up an AI-ready data centre with giga-watt capacity in Jamnagar.

2. AI in telecom: The Jio AI cloud will offer up to 100 GB of free cloud storage during its Diwali offers. It also plans to introduce the Jio Phone Call AI, enabling its 490 million subscribers to easily record and store their phone calls on the cloud. Their AI aims to provide users with features that can be used to transcribe spoken words to text and also minimise language barriers by providing translation features for different languages.

3. Growth of retail business: The retail wing of Reliance is also expecting a 2x growth in the next few years. It is already among the top 5 retailers in India and the top 10 in terms of market capitalisation.

4. Development of coastal infrastructure: To further its green energy commitment, Reliance has secured 2,000 acres of land near the Kandla port, which complements its already existing infrastructure at Jamnagar. This will help them expand their production, storage, and evacuation capabilities and ship green fuels across India.

5. Increasing power generation capabilities: Reliance Industries has also secured leases on arid wastelands around Kutch to generate more than 150 billion units of electricity over the next decade. Just 250 km from their Jamnagar plant, this power generation unit, once operational, will be able to meet 10% of the country's energy requirements.

6. Focus on solar energy: The company is also building their transmission network to bring solar-generated electricity to the grid and provide this clean renewable energy source for consumption in a phased manner starting in 2026. The conglomerate expects its energy business to become profitable in the next 5-7 years, and it will also commence manufacturing of solar cells, modules, ingots, and polysilicon material in its integrated solar production units, which will have an initial capacity of 10 GW.

7. Partnership with Disney: Reliance and The Walt Disney Company have merged their digital and TV assets, creating an $8.5-billion media behemoth that aims to provide globally acclaimed digital entertainment at affordable prices.

8. Launch of Jio Financial Services: Jio Financial Services was launched last year as a separately listed entity and already has a market capitalisation of Rs. 2.2 lakh crores.

9. Announcement of bonus shares: Echoing the sentiments of the founder of Reliance Industries, Dhirubhai Amabani, who believed in sharing the profits of the company with the shareholders, Mukesh Amabani announced the company’s plan to provide a bonus of 1:1 to its shareholders, given the good performance of the company in the last fiscal year.

10. Introduction of JioTV OS: JioTV OS provides a smooth viewing experience with video streaming, which is possible in 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision, and Dolby surround sound.

The OS will also come loaded with Hello Jio, an AI voice assistant, to make browsing their entertainment catalogue easier.