Ambani plans to make a Jio feat in new energy

New Delhi: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIl), whose offering of rock-bottom tariffs shook up the telecom industry, is looking to repeat the feat in the green energy business, where its billionaire chairman Mukesh Ambani sees promise to outshine all existing growth engines in 5-7 years.

Having pledged Rs6 lakh crore on green energy, Ambani says RIL will scale up investments in this business which will start going live in the next 12 months.

"Over the next 12 months our investments across the Green Energy value chain will gradually start going live, scaling up over the next couple of years," Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL, said in the company's latest annual report. "This new growth engine holds great promise to outshine all our existing growth engines in just 5-7 years." Ambani is pivoting Reliance toward clean energy in an attempt to diversify away from its traditional oil refining and petrochemical businesses. The firm is building giga-factories for the entire green energy value chain -- from solar power generation to the production of green hydrogen to its distribution and consumption.

This is with a view to bringing down the current high cost to affordable limits. The tycoon has a track record of implementing business transformations and has morphed Reliance from being an energy giant to a consumer services behemoth in the last decade. "FY 2021-22 marked the beginning of Reliance's Green Transformation, at a scale which will make India the world's leading green energy producer," Ambani said. Reliance will develop end-to-end green energy solutions to make them available for everyone at the most affordable price, says Ambani. "We know that affordability is the most critical factor in the adoption of any new technology and the scale of societal benefit it can create.

Reliance has embarked on this journey with a vision to repeat the feat it achieved in wireless broadband." Jio, the firm's telecom venture, scaled to become the No.1 operator in the country within years of launch as it acquired customers by offering free voice calling and dirt cheap data on mobile phones. "Just as India has the world's most affordable wireless broadband today, we will have the world's most affordable green energy within this decade," he said. "And these solutions will then be exported to other countries, helping them contain carbon emissions." Leveraging its world-class execution capability and strong debt-free balance sheet, Reliance has begun investing in the clean energy space. It has commenced the development of four factories at Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat and completed acquisitions and investments of more than Rs 5,500 crore to build capabilities in new energy.