Mumbai: Reliance Industries will start offering 4G telecom services next year and unveiled a Rs 1.8 lakh crore investment plan across businesses aimed at catapulting it into the top 50 companies of the world.
About five years after buying out Infotel Broadband Services within hours of the firm winning nationwide wireless broadband licenses, RIL will start wireless-broadband services in 5,000 cities and 2,15,000 villages in 2015, Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said Wednesday.
The company, which returned to the telecom sector in 2010 with the Rs 4,800 crore acquisition of Infotel, is investing Rs 70,000 crore in the business that will eventually span each of India's more than 6,00,000 villages.
Addressing the annual shareholders meeting of the company, which also operates the world's largest crude oil refining complex, Ambani, the world's richest energy billionaire, unveiled his vision to achieve in the next three years what the firm had done in 37 years of its listed history.
RIL will invest Rs 1.8 lakh crore in margin-enhancing petrochem units, expansion of the energy business, opening more retail stores and the rollout of the telecom venture.
The firm plans to use fourth-generation technology called long-term evolution, or LTE, to offer wireless broadband services. This, Ambani said, will help India become a leader in the digital era.
"They would ensure that every Indian has access to state-of-the-art digital connectivity and services that are on par with or better than anywhere else in the world."
With his mother Kokila Ambani, wife Nita Ambani and children watching, he said RIL, which is currently ranked 135 on the Fortune 500 list of global companies, is looking at breaking into the top 50.
At the AGM, Nita Ambani was inducted into the company board as the first woman director, thereby meeting a new law requiring listed companies to have at least one woman in the boardroom to boost gender diversity.
RIL's telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm, the only company with nationwide permits for 4G services, will start field trials in August before a full-fledged rollout in 2015.
Ambani said the company, which became the biggest retailer in the country by revenue in 2013-14, is aiming at doubling its retail business every 3-4 years.
While it looks to increasing output from its eastern offshore gas fields, RIL will begin extracting gas from coal seams (coal-bed methane or CBM) in Madhya Pradesh in 2015-16.
To shareholders queries, he said the company will raise Rs 60,000 crore in debt over the next two years but will be debt-free on an overall basis by 2017 with a large cash pile.
"In the past 37 years, we invested Rs 2,40,000 crore and in this current three years' investment cycle, we will be investing over Rs 1,80,000 crore," Ambani said.
He said RIL was at the mid-point of the investment cycle and projects in petrochemicals, refining, retail and telecom will come on stream over the next two financial years.
"The next three years are transformational in RIL's journey... By the time we finish four decades since our first public offering, we will again be a radically different company. We hope to accomplish as much in the next three years as we have achieved in the past 37 years," he said.
"Over the next three years, the commissioning of each of our large projects in petrochemicals and refining, strengthening of our retail business and the launch of Jio business will propel us closer to our aspiration of being a Fortune 50 company," he said.
Ambani said efforts are on to maximise oil and gas output from its fields and the firm's partnership with BP resulted in two significant discoveries in KG-D6 and CYD5 blocks.
"Timely regulatory approvals and market-based gas prices are the key to developing these resources," he said, adding that arbitration has been initiated against the government over a gas price revision that was due on April 1.
This arbitration is in addition to one it initiated against penalties levied for producing less gas than targeted. RIL will seek prompt resolution on both matters, he said.
Ambani said with CBM, RIL will become the largest player in the unconventional energy sector in India.
