The Reliance Journey — the one Indian brand that made it big in the market.
India, being a land of seemingly diverse subjects and the flag bearer of some of the top conglomerates in the world, stands 5th in terms of the world economy ranked under nominal GDP leapfrogging France and the UK over the years. This rapid jump from the 9th place to the 5th place in a span of 9 years is fueled by urbanization and technologies that have improved productivity and efficiency in India.
Today, India remains as one of the fastest economies in the world and Reliance industries remains as the largest company in India surpassing the Indian Oil Corporation in terms of revenue as of 2020. Reliance Industries — the most diversified company in India is the first-ever Indian company to cross a $150 billion in market capitalization and is responsible for almost 5% of the total revenue of the Indian Government from customs and excise duty. This billion-dollar company headquartered in Mumbai has created a world-class transformation in the Indian Industry and has a great impact on people all around the world.
It all started when the legendary industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani started Reliance Commercial corporation — a venture for trading spices in the 1960s. Once the business started to grow quickly, he diverted his focus onto the textiles in the 70s establishing a synthetic textile mill in Naroda which turned out to be one of the world’s largest and most modern textile complexes branded as Vimal ( called as Queen of Textiles) over the years. Later, they started exporting the fabrics to over 58 countries becoming one of the most trusted brands in India. By the end of the 1980s, Reliance expanded into a polyester business with Vimal Textiles as its foundation and emerged as the world’s largest manufacturers of polyester fibres and yarns with a capacity of 2.5 million tons per year in terms of a polyester fibre-based consumer product with a trademark name Recron. It was during this time that the name of the company changed from Reliance Textiles Limited to Reliance Industries Limited. When the polyester business was amplified in the 90s, reliance commissioned a petrochemical unit in Gujarat to manufacture thermoplastic polymer ( shampoo bottles, plastic bottles) and PVC’s in collaboration with DuPont — the world’s largest chemical company. But as the business expanded to the enormous requirement of polymers, polyesters, elastomers, aromatics and composite solutions increased, an integrated petrochemical complex was constructed at Jamnagar, Gujarat in 1999 and that was the beginning. As years passed and when reliance slithered into the refining and petroleum business collectively named as Reliance petroleum, the Jamnagar refinery became the largest refinery and petrochemical complex ever built. Later in 2001, Reliance Industries merged with Reliance Petroleum and expanded as the largest crude oil refinery in the world processing 1.24 million barrels of crude a day which would let you drive 13 round trips to the sun every day.
Not just the petrochemicals, Reliance entered into the retail business in the year 2006 introducing brands like Reliance Fresh, Reliance Smart, Reliance Trends, Reliance Jewels, Jio Mart, Ajio, project Eve ( fashion and beauty salon) and so on partnering with the high premium international brands like Armani Exchange, Hamleys, Michael Kors, Tiffany & Co, Diesel, Marks and Spencer along with so many others. A 100% acquisition of the iconic toy retailer Hamleys is the first-ever foray of Reliance Retail.
As of today, Reliance Retail also holds the 15% stake of Ronnie Screwvala in Zivame — one of the most popular brands in India and is in discussion with other partners to take control over the whole company.
Reliance has expanded the traces of its brand name to different sectors and established a dominance everywhere just the way Amazon has. Reliance Retail — specifically Jio Mart has evolved as a tough competitor for Walmart and Amazon. As Walmart completed a $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart, Amazon may be looking to partner with Reliance Retail to strengthen its e-commerce operations in India which may lead to a collaboration with Jiomart which is a threat to other Indian e-commerce players
Subsequently, Reliance Retail has grown into the largest retailer in India in terms of revenue. Reliance also owns some of the most popular in-store brands like DNMX, John Players, Reconnect +, Enzo matic and so on.
Reliance is not behind when it comes to Media and Entertainment as well. Reliance owns the majority of Network 18 media conglomerate which is the parent organization of TV18, DEN networks and Hathway cable and datacom. Network 18 also owns websites like moneycontrol and Firstpost and also the Forbes India Magazine. Today, they own 72 Indian channels (a joint venture with Viacom owning Colors infinity to Vh1) with a reach of 800 million Indian audiences. Reliance Entertainment ( production house) also produced more than 45 movies in multiple languages including the big Bollywood blockbusters like 3 idiots, Don 2, Ghajini, Udta Punjab, etc and some of the big movies in South as well. This reliance venture is owned by Anil Ambani after the death of Dhirubhai in the year 2002.
The next business in which Reliance emerged as a trendsetter is the telecom industry. Reliance industries entered the telecom business in the 90s through a joint venture with NYNEX — an American telephone company. Later in 2002, Reliance communications — a mobile network provider offering 2G and 3G was established under the control of Anil Ambani. The feud between the Ambani brothers is a different story. Unfortunately, reliance communication became bankrupt by 2019 and the business was closed. Meanwhile, Mukesh Ambani was drafting plans to enter the telecom industry and that’s how Reliance jio Infocomm Limited was born. But the idea was seeded by his prodigal daughter Isha Ambani in 2011 and thereby revolutionized the telecom industry. Reliance officially launched Jio in the year 2016 originally named as Joint Implementation Opportunities. India, being the second largest country with the fastest-growing internet base, had a massive jump to 40x in data consumption since the launch of Jio. Jio took just 3 years to establish 4G LTE network and now they’re 5G ready. Their basic motive was to provide coverage in major rural areas and even provided smartphones starting at a deposit of 1500 INR. Today, Jio is the largest mobile network operator in India and the 3rd largest in the world. Since then, jio never looked back. They expanded their business into various ventures of digital services like JioFiber, JioFi, Smartphones, Jio Browser, Jiochat, Jiomoney, Jiotv, JioSavnn and the recent one Jiomeet. People say that JioMeet — a video conferencing platform is a plagiarised form of the Zoom app. Technically, the only difference between the apps is that JioMeet provides you with unlimited Video conferencing whereas Zoom has a restricted time of 1 hour. And what about JioTv plus? It’s a project where multiple content platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, EROS, Disney+Hotstar, Youtube, etc are going to be aggregated on Jio’s set-top box. Each of the Jio ventures has emerged as a tough competition for the existing big players and is now the jack of all trades. Not just that. The biggest companies like Intel, Facebook and Google started investing in Jio as of July 2020, which made Reliance debt-free and it is one of the biggest milestones for Reliance. Today, Reliance has etched their footprints on all the sectors and came out in flying colours with full-fledged ownership over the telecom industry, petrochemical industry and the Retail business, and the only sector they spared is the IT.
On the other side, A genuine vein of Philanthropy exists among the Ambani’s as well. Reliance Foundation led by Nita Ambani is an initiative focused on Rural transformation, Health, Education, Sports and Development, Disaster Response, Arts, Culture and Heritage. It was launched in the year 2010 partnering with several NGOs and the Mumbai Indians sports team. Talking about the Mumbai Indians, they are the first Indian sports franchise to hit a 100 crore sponsorship revenue bagging 4 IPL titles and 2 Champions League 20–20 wins. Mukesh Ambani owns the team and Nita Ambani represents the franchise. The most entertaining factor of the organization ( Reliance Foundation )is that every year around 18,000 students are taken to watch a live IPL match. As of today, Reliance Foundation has touched the lives of 35 million people across India.
So, from spices to the staircase leading to the digital doorway, Reliance Industries has seen it all. In February 2020, Mukesh Ambani bagged the “Iconic businessman” of the decade award hosted by India’s number 1 business channel CNBC 18. Today, reliance is, in the long run, to make the next 10 years as the Golden decade to drive India to be among the top 3 economies in the world.
Bonus facts — There are multiple speculations about the name Jio. The name Jio was given as an anecdote of the late Dhirubhai Ambani. A person who blessed people with the word Jio ( which means celebrate your life). The second one says that JIO is the mirror image of OIL.
Reliance is the largest mango exporter with 127 varieties of mangoes growing in the farmland of Jamnagar beating Israel and Brazil. They converted the wastelands in Jamnagar to Mango orchards to withstand the enormous pollution caused by their own refineries.
