Flush with the success of having garnered over ₹1.5 lakh crore in investment commitments from global investors in its Jio Platforms, Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) is looking to raise capital in a similar manner for its retail and petrochemical businesses, chairman Mukesh Ambani indicated on Wednesday.

“We have received strong interest from strategic and financial investors in Reliance Retail,” Mr. Ambani told shareholders at the company’s AGM. “We will induct global partners and investors in Reliance Retail in the next few quarters,” he added.

RIL had been approached by global companies for strategic partnerships in its petrochemical business as well, the chairman said.

“These potential partnerships will help us build competitive manufacturing capacity at our existing sites to serve the deficit Indian market. With this we will have an integrated and competitive oil-to-chemicals (O2C) portfolio, which is valuable to global companies as it provides access to the large and growing Indian market,” he said.

Observing that Saudi Aramco’s planned investment in RIL had been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances in the energy market and the COVID-19 situation, Mr. Ambani said since the company’s equity requirements had already been met it would prefer a long-term partnership with the Saudi energy major.

Separate O2C unit

“We will approach NCLT with our proposal to spin off our O2C business into a separate subsidiary to facilitate this partnership opportunity. We expect to complete this process by early 2021,” he added.

RIL, he said, was transforming its energy business to make it net carbon-zero by 2035. “We have a 15-year vision to build Reliance as one of the world’s leading new energy and new materials company,” Mr. Ambani added.

He said the new energy business would make clean and green energy abundantly available at an affordable price to every Indian, every enterprise and every utility.