Mukesh Ambani AGM speech highlights — Reliance Industries announces Jio Glass, Google partnership and plans to build a new smartphone

• Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani announced Jio Platforms new partnership with Google today during the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM).
• He also announced his plans to launch an entry-level 4G or 5G smartphone for Indian users, for which it needs Google to build an Android-based operating system.
• Ambani also announced Reliance Industries’ aim to become net-carbon-free by 2035.

A Jio-Google partnership, Jio Glass, new android operating system, and the goal to be carbon-free by 2035 were some of the main announcements made by Reliance Jio chairman, Mukesh Ambani, during today’s Annual General Meeting (AGM).

Ambani also announced Reliance Jio’s plans to design a new entry-level 4G or even a 5G smartphone for a fraction of its current cost. Google will help Jio on the software side by developing a new Android-based smartphone operating system with the aim of making India ‘25-mukt’.

However, the market doesn’t seem thrilled as Reliance Industries’ share price dipped by nearly 4% after the AGM.

Here are some of the main announcements from Reliance Industries’ AGM

• Reliance Industries becomes net-debt free
  

“I’m happy to report we have fulfilled the promise of a net debt-free balance sheet well ahead of the timelines we had set for ourselves. In a short span of a few months, we have raised a record amount of capital and forged several new strategic partnerships,” said Mukesh Ambani.

• India’s largest-ever rights issue complete
  

“We completed India’s largest-ever ₹53,124 crore rights issue. This was also the world’s largest rights issue by a non-financial institution in a decade. This was oversubscribed over 1.59 times. It was completed entirely on a digital platform during the lockdown period,” said Ambani.

• New partnership with Google for $4.5 billion
  

“As we end our current cycle of capital raising, we are delighted to welcome another strategic partner into Jio — Google. Today we have signed a binding partnership and investment agreement with Google under which Google will invest ₹33,737 core for a 7.7% stake into Jio Platforms,” said Ambani.

• Plan to build India’s next entry-level 4G or 5G smartphone
  

“Google and Jio are partnering to build an Android-based smartphone operating system,” said Ambani explaining that the target was to make India ‘2G mukt’.

“Our investment of $4.5 billion in Jio is the first and the biggest investment we will make through this quarter,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai during the AGM.

• Jio’s plan for the next three years
  

“In the next three years, I can see a strong path for Jio to connect over half a billion mobile customers, over a billion smart sensors, and over 50 million homes and business establishments,” said Ambani.

• Jio announces Jio Glass
  

Kiran Thomas, president of Reliance Industries introduced Jio’s new mixed-reality solution called Jio Glass.



“Jio Healthcare relies on three main pillars — 4G and JioFiber network, JioMeets, and JioHealth Hub platform which provides end-to-end healthcare services,” explained Mukesh Ambani’s daughter, Isha Ambani.

“Jio Education platform EMBIBE has three foundational building blocks — personalisation, content, and teacher empowerment,” she added.

• JioMart to expand beyond groceries
  

“In addition to grocery, we will expand JioMart to cover electronics, fashion, pharmaceutical and healthcare in the days ahead,” said Mukesh Ambani.

• Reliance Industries wants to be carbon-free by 2035
  

“The impact of climate change calls for the legacy energy industry to reinvent itself on a war footing. The world needs access to clean and affordable energy and this must be met as it is a prerequisite for quality of life for all people,” said Ambani.

• Reliance Industries oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business launches the world’s first butyl rubber planet.
  

“We have commissioned India’s first butyl rubber planet which places us among the world’s top ten producers of butyl rubber,” said Ambani.

• Joint venture between Reliance Industries and BP to be called Jio BP
  

“BP has invested ₹7,629 crore for its 49% stake in Joint Venture,” Ambani told stakeholders during the AGM.



Here are full list of highlights from Mukesh Ambani’s address at Reliance Industries’ AGM:

• I believe every adversity presents multiple new opportunities.
• JioMeets has already been downloaded by more than 5 million users. It is India’s only cloud-based video conferencing app. It was built in just 2 months.
• Reliance became the first Indian company to exceed the market capitalisation of $150 billion.
• Reliance is also the first Indian company to cross ₹ 1,00,000 crore is consolidated EBITDA.
• Consolidated EBITDA growth up 10% over last year due to strong growth in organised reaching and our digital services business.
• Our consumer business’ continued to deliver hyper-growth with EBITDA growth of 49%. They contribute about 35% of our consolidated EBITDA.
• Just five years ago, all of our EBITDA was from energy, hydrocarbon, and materials business. Since then, our consumer and technology businesses by rapidly achieved scale by their exponential growth.
• At over ₹200,000 crore, we continue to be India’s largest exporter accounting for 9.1% of India’s total merchandise exports across 109 countries.
• We are India’s highest taxpayer of customs and excise duty in the private sector with payments of over ₹21,660. At over ₹69,372 crore, we are also the highest payers of income tax in the private sector paying ₹8,386 crore last year.
• I’m happy to report we have fulfilled the promise of a net debt-free balance sheet well ahead of the timelines we had set for ourselves.
• In a short span of a few months, we have raised a record amount of capital and forged several new strategic partnerships.
• We completed India’s largest-ever ₹53,124 crore rights issue. This was also the world’s largest rights issue by a non-financial institution in a decade.
• This was oversubscribed over 1.59 times. It was completed entirely on a digital platform during the lockdown period.
• Let me take a moment to introduce our new partners in Jio Platforms
  • Facebook as our premier strategic partner.
  • Silver Lake
  • Vista Equity Partners
  • General Atlantic
  • KKR
  • TPG
  • L Catterton
  • Intel and Qualcomm who have shaped the semiconductor industry are at the heart of digital ecosystems. We will work with them to develop new products for India and Indians.
  • ADIA, Mubadala of the UAE and PIF of Saudi Arabia
• As we end our current cycle of capital raising, we are delighted to welcome another strategic partner into Jio — Google.
• Today we have signed a binding partnership and investment agreement with Google under which Google will invest ₹33,737 core for a 7.7% stake into Jio Platforms.
• BP has invested ₹7,629 crore for its 49% stake in Joint Venture.
• Cumulatively, we have raised a total of ₹2,12,809 crore through our rights issues, the combined investment in Jio Platforms, and investment by BP.
• Our world will change more unrecognised in just the eight remaining decades of the 21st century than today’s world was 20 centuries ago.
• Jio is now the undisputed leader in India with the largest customer base, with the largest share of data and voice traffic, and next-generation broadband network.
• Jio’s vision stands on two solid pillars, one is digital connectivity and the other is digital platforms.
• We have now fully kickstarted all the give accelerators of growth — mobile broadband, JioFiber home broadband, enterprise broadband, broadband for SME and narrow-band Internet-of-Things (NB-IoT).
• Our mobile broadband network is the largest and had delivered 500 crore gigabytes (GB) last month.
• We have already connected more than 1 million people on JioFiber. Our growth will accelerate as we gear up to connect millions more in the coming months during the post-COVID period.
• In the next three years, I can see a strong path for Jio to connect over half a billion mobile customers, over a billion smart sensors, and over 50 million homes and business establishments.
• Jio’s global scale 4G and fiber network is powered by several core technologies and components that have been developed by young Jio engineers in India.
• Jio I have great pride in announcing that Jio have designed and developed a complete 5G solution from scratch. This will enable us to launch a world-class 5G service in India using 100% homegrown technology and solutions.
• This 5G solution will be ready for trial as soon as 5G spectrum is available and can be ready for field deployment next year.
• Once Jio’s 5G solutions is proven at India-scale, Jio Platforms will be well-positioned to be an exporter of 5G solutions to other telecom operators globally as a complete managed service.
• Apps like MyJio and JioSaavn have become household names.
• Jio Platforms now includes:
  • 4G and 5G technology
  • Cloud computing
  • Device and operating systems
  • Big data analytics
  • Machine learnings (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Virtual and Mixed Reality (VR and MR)
  • Blockchain
  • Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
  • Computer Vision

• Our start-up partners have contributed significantly to our strengths across many of these areas. We are inviting even more startups to join forces with up.
• Reliance Jio announces Jio Glass.

• Jio Glass comes with a cable that you can attach to your phone and connect to the internet.
• It weighs only 75 grams.
• It provides the best in class MR services to give you an immersive experience.
• On the audio front, we have pioneered a special and personalised audio system without having any accessories attached.
• Jio Glass already supports more than 25 apps.
• You can 3D holograms and diagrams with your colleagues.
• Jio Glass is making teachers and students come together in 3D virtual rooms and conduct holographic classes through our Jio MR Cloud in real-time
• With Jio Meets, you can conduct online assemblies for your entire school or hold full-day sessions since there are no limits on the number of students or call duration.
• Jio Education platform EMBIBE has three foundational building blocks — personalisation, content, and teacher empowerment.
• Jio Healthcare relies on three main pillars — 4G and JioFiber network, JioMeets, and JioHealth Hub platform which provides end-to-end healthcare services.
• I’m proud to share that the entire 5G stack has been built in house by Jio employees.
• JioMart is built on two fundamental pillars — a powerful omnichannel tech platform that will unite the triad of customers, kirana stores and producers and two, a widespread physical network of Reliance Retail.
• JioMart has been launched across 200 cities in India.
• With JioMart, kirana stores will no longer be held back by limited product range, space, or delivery challenges.
• We have successfully piloted the kirana transformation and those who have opted for this have been positively surprised.
• Last year we announced a partnership with Microsoft, I am happy to report we have made progress in our Azure cloud partnership.
• “We are also going to be working on some critical projects that will open up a lot of opportunities for commerce in India,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
• JioMart and WhatsApp will be working closely to create growth opportunities for millions of India’s small merchants and kirana shops.
• Jio has been committed to providing affordable 4G devices to more than 300 million feature phone users in India. It is will this intention we developed the JioPhone, which is still the world’s most affordable 4G phone.
• We believe we can design an entry-level 4G or even a 5G smartphone for a fraction of its current cost.
• To power such a value-engineered smartphone, we also need an equally value-engineered smartphone operating system. And, such an operating system must be designed with India in mind. Google and Jio are partnering to build an Android-based smartphone operating system.
  Jio is determined to make India ‘2G-mukt’.
• “Our investment of $4.5 billion in Jio is the first and the biggest investment we will make through this quarter,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
• Network18 reaches more than 80 million India, our digital properties are used by over 200 million people every month. It is among the top 10 players in the digital news space.
• Den and Hathaway are being merged with Network18 and TV18 subject to regulatory approvals.
• This will make Network18 the largest listed media and distribution company in the country.
• Last year, Reliance Retail revenue was ₹1,62,936 crore and our EBITDA was over ₹9,654 crore. We are India’s largest and most profitable retail business.
• Reliance Retail is the fastest-growing retailer in the world and the only Indian retailer to feature in the top 100 global retailers.
• In the last five years, our retail business’ revenue has grown 8 times and profit has grown 11 times.
• More than two-thirds of our nearly 12,000 stores are operated in Tier II, Tier III, and Tier IV towns.
• 80% of Reliance Retail’s fresh fruits and vegetables are sourced directly from farmers.
• Just within a few weeks the launch of JioMart in 200 cities, we have reached over 2,50,000 orders a day and the numbers continue to grow each day.
• JioMart is now focused on scaling its geographical reach and delivery capabilities.
• In addition to grocery, we will expand JioMart to cover electronics, fashion, pharmaceutical and healthcare in the days ahead.
• Our oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business outperformed the sector and delivered an EBITDA of ₹55,294 crore.
• All of the manufacturing units continue to operate at over 90% capacity utilisation.
• We enhanced our petroleum and field exports by over 2.5x in 2 weeks.
• In April 2020, our O2C business accounted for nearly 50% of India’s exports.
• We have commissioned India’s first butyl rubber planet which places us among the world’s top ten producers of butyl rubber.
• We expect to restart the KG 56 towards the end of the year and provide India with natural gas.
• We have strengthened our relationship with BP who have an investment in our existing fuel retailing business under a new brand of Jio BP.
• The impact of climate change calls for the legacy energy industry to reinvent itself on a war footing. The world needs access to clean and affordable energy and this must be met as it is a prerequisite for quality of life for all people.
• Make carbon dioxide a recyclable resource rather than treating it as an emitted waste.
• While Reliance will remain a user of crude oil and natural gas, we are committed to using new technologies to convert our carbon dioxide into useful products.
  We will develop next-gen carbon capture and storage technologies. We are evaluating novel-catalytic and electromechanical transformation to use carbon dioxide as a valuable feedstock.
• Reliance also has proprietary technology to convert transportation fuels to valuable petrochemical and material building blocks.
• We will replace transportation fuels with clean electricity and hydro-energy.
• We will combine our strengths in digital, power electronics, advanced materials electrochemistry to build full-stack electrolyser and fuel cell solutions in India.
• We target to become net carbon zero by the year 2035.
• We have a 15-year vision to build Reliance as one of the world's leading and new energy and new material company.
• It is a multi-million dollar opportunity for India.

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