RIL: Sitting Pretty

Trustworthy leadership, handsome financial returns and growth plans — these are the three parameters on which Reliance Industries (RIL) scored high, and which helped it to break into the top-20 list of BW Businessworld India’s Most Respected Companies (MRC). Undoubtedly, RIL is the undisputed numero uno company in India having reported the biggest turnover of Rs 15.7 lakh crore in 2018-19. For the same reason it was also ranked number one in the annual list of top BW 500 companies for FY-19.  

The last fiscal saw a number of milestones being achieved by some of the leading Reliance group companies. Take, for example, Reliance Retail. It crossed the Rs 100,000-crore revenue milestone. Jio, the disrupter in the telecom services and broadband data space, crossed 300 million subscribers, adding on an average 10 million subscribers a month to become the world’s fastest growing digital services company. 

It would not be incorrect to say that Reliance Jio has been driving growth and numbers for RIL’s infocomm business. The fiscal year 2018-19 was exceptional in that regard for RIL. In calendar year 2018, Jio carried close to 71 per cent of the total 4G traffic in India, as per its annual report for FY19, besides adding some interesting data points. For example, every Jio subscriber consumed on an average 10.9 GB data, 823 minutes of voice calls and 17 hours of video per month, said the annual report. 

In 2020, all eyes are on the performance of Reliance Jio GigaFiber, the ultimate broadband experience that was launched in September last year. Jio GigaFiber enables customer to surf, stream, game and work with plans upwards of 100Mbps and it comes bundled with fixed landline with free calling, low-cost international call packs for US/Canada and much more. The premium customers of Jio have been promised Jio’s ‘First Day First Show’ release of new films by mid-2020. Jio Fiber will come bundled with popular OTT?services as well. Jio, as per the company, will now focus on four aspects — Internet of things, home broadband service, enterprise broadband service and SME broadband service.

Even in the current fiscal, Reliance Jio continues to report stellar performance. For the third quarter ended December 31, 2019, Jio reported 370 million subscribers, a net addition of 14.8 million subscribers in the three months since the end of September 2019 when it had reported a subscriber base of 355.2 million. Therefore, for the 9-month period of the 2020 fical, Jio reportedly added a total of 135.7 million subscribers. There was also an improvement in the average revenue per user for Jio. For the third-quarter, Jio reported a revenue of Rs 128.4 per subscriber per month, up from Rs 120 in the previous quarter. The total wireless data traffic for Jio totalled 12.08 billion gigabytes (GB), up from 12.02 billion GB in the previous quarter. The total voice traffic during quarter stood at 826.4 billion minutes, up from 812.62 billion minutes from the previous quarter, a 30.3 per cent growth year on year, and based on an average usage of 760 minutes per user per month.

The petrochemicals business of RIL delivered its highest ever earnings in FY19. “I am proud of the entire Reliance team; their hard work and dedication has laid the foundation for these achievements and many more to come,” said Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries.  

For the financial year 2018-19, RIL’s net profit jumped 13.1 per cent to Rs 39,588 crore, while revenue climbed by 44.6 per cent to Rs 622,809 crore, helped by higher realisation for refining and petrochemical products with a 22 per cent increase in average Brent crude price on an year-on-year basis.