During the past two years, Reliance has made an investment of Rs 150 billion in West Bengal, thrice of what it had committed, and there is more to come. "Didi — we could make this large investment only because you have created a friendly climate and an enabling policy infrastructure," said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Ltd, at the inaugural session of the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit. A major portion of the investment has gone towards creating the Jio network.
Ambani also said, under the Chief Minister’s leadership, West Bengal is becoming Best Bengal. Going forward, Reliance will be working with multiple partners to explore setting up next generation state-of-the-art electronics manufacturing facilities and make West Bengal the hub for innovation and hi-tech technologies for consumer devices such as mobile phones, set-top boxes, and other devices. The quantum of investment in such a venture or timeframe wasn’t mentioned. That apart, Ambani also committed that Jio will reach 100 per cent of Bengal’s population before the end of 2018. The Jio network now covers 1,000 towns and nearly 39,000 villages in the state, that covers almost 98 per cent of Bengal’s population. Reliance is also embarking on a project of connecting Bengal with optic fibre and will be setting up digital service centres in five districts of Bengal with immediate effect. Plus, Reliance has committed an additional investment of Rs 50 billion in Jio and the entire digital eco-system, retail and petro-retail in the next years. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee can only hope that Reliance betters its record of tripling the target like last time.