Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani, during the company's 47th annual general meeting today, says the company has spent over ₹3,643 crore (US$ 437 million) in FY24 towards R&D, taking our spend on research to over ₹11,000 crore (US$ 1.5 billion) in the last four years alone.
"We have more than 1,000 scientists and researchers working on critical research projects across all our businesses. I feel proud to inform you that last year Reliance filed over 2,555 patents," Ambani says in the shareholders meeting.
He says RIL's future is "far brighter" than the past. "For example, Reliance took over two decades to be among the Top 500 companies globally. The following two decades saw us joining the league of the world’s top 50 most valuable companies. With our strategic adoption of Deep-Tech and Advance Manufacturing, I can clearly see Reliance earning a place in the Top-30 League in the near future".
The RIL Chairman says Reliance invested over ₹5.28 lakh crore (US$ 66.0 billion) in the last three years and remained the single largest contributor to the national exchequer, contributing ₹1,86,440 crore (US$ 22.4 billion) through various taxes and duties in FY 2023-24. In the last three years, Reliance’s contribution to the exchequer crossed ₹5.5 lakh crore (US$ 68.7 billion), the highest by any Indian corporates.
Speaking about RIL's 'social impact', Ambani says with a 25% increase in its annual CSR spending to ₹1,592 crore (US$ 191 million), Reliance’s total CSR spend in the last three years crossed ₹4,000 crore (US$ 502 million), also the largest among all Indian corporates.
Speaking about Jio, he says India is now the world’s "largest data market", and that Jio’s network carries nearly 8% of global mobile traffic, surpassing even major global operators. "And we have done this while maintaining the highest service quality, setting new benchmarks on the global stage. In eight years, Jio has grown to become the world’s largest mobile data company," he says.
According to Ambani, each Jio customer, on average, uses over 30 GB of data monthly, driving a 33% growth in its data traffic over the past year.
"We have also made significant strides in-home services, with nearly 30 million homes customers across our digital broadband services and digital TV services. This makes us one of the largest digital home services providers globally."
Among business users, he says over a million small and medium businesses in India have Jio. Over 80% of the top 5,000 large enterprises in the country use Jio services, he said.
RIL shares are trading 1.85% up at ₹3,051.20 on the BSE, taking its m-cap to ₹20.6 lakh crore. The company in an exchange filing today said its board will meet on September 5, 2024, to consider and recommend the "issue of bonus shares in the ratio of 1:1 to the equity shareholders of the company by capitalisation of reserves".
