Mukesh Ambani, on Monday, announced fresh investments worth ₹2.75-lakh crore to scale up various businesses under the Reliance industries empire including a pan-India 5G roll out by December 2023, entry into the FMCG space and building new capacity in the traditional petrochemicals unit.
Speaking at the Reliance Industries’ annual general meeting on Monday, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said Jio’s 5G network will be the largest and most advanced in the world.
Pan-India 5G launch
“To build our pan-India true 5G network, we have committed a total investment of ₹2-lakh crore. Jio has prepared an ambitious 5G roll-out plan which will be the fastest in the world. Within the next two months, by Diwali, we will launch Jio 5G across multiple key cities, including the metropolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai. 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 said.
RIL also announced a 5G solution to allow customers to enjoy fiber-like data speeds over the air called JioAirFiber, a wireless, simple, single-device solution to have a Wi-Fi hotspot at home.
“With single device JioAirFiber, it will be really easy to quickly connect any home or office to gigabit-speed internet. With the simplicity of JioAirFiber, hundreds of millions of homes and offices can be connected to ultra-high-speed broadband in a very short period. With it, India can rank among the top-10 nations, even for fixed broadband,” said Ambani, adding that Reliance is working with Google to develop ultra-affordable 5G smartphones for India.
FMCG entry
In the retail business, Reliance will launch its fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products as a part of its growth plans. The company also announced a partnership between Meta and Jiomart to offer an end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp.
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Meta, said in a post, “This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp. People can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat. Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come.”
New carbon fibre plant
RIL also announced a ₹75,000-crore investment to expand capacities in existing and new value chains in its petrochemicals business. First, in the polyester value chain, it will build one of the world’s largest single-train PTA plant of 3 mmtpa capacity at Dahej.
RIL will also invest in a 1 mmtpa PET plant at Dahej. Both PTA and PET will be targeted for completion by 2026. In the Vinyl chain, RIL will more than triple its existing capacity by adding world-scale plants at Dahej and Jamnagar in India, and also in the UAE.
RIL will build in phases India’s first and one of the world’s largest carbon fibre plants at Hazira with a capacity of 20,000 mtpa, based on acrylonitrile feedstock. “Besides other applications, carbon fibre composites are also used to meet the rapidly growing light-weight requirements of mobility and renewable energy. Thus, carbon fibre promises to be a multi-decade growth engine for O2C.” Ambani added.