Days before US President Barack Obama's high-powered visit here, the US-India CEO Forum has been reconstituted with Cyrus Mistry replacing Ratan Tata as its co-chairman
India's leading businessmen attended the grand banquet organised to honour US President Barack Obama at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The CCI has asked the companies to explain within 30 days why an investigation should not be ordered.
India needs another shot of difficult reform, of the kind only possible at gunpoint. Mr Trump holds that gun to our heads now. A drastic reduction in tariff protection, other elements of sarkari wet-nursing will force entrepreneurial India to become competitive again, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Four persons have been invited to the inaugration of Barack Obama in Washington. America. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, business tycoon Mukesh Ambani and Dr Surat Singh, a lawyer at the Supreme court who was Obama's class mate at Harvad Law School.
The Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, came together on Thursday to raise the issue of stalled projects plaguing India Inc and implored the Maharashtra government and the Centre to make Mumbai, India's financial capital, an easier place for business and investments. "Several projects are stuck for many years in Mumbai and we would like to know how the government intends to improve the financing and execution of projects, including those relating to infrastructure and education which have been in limbo for long and are affecting the growth of the city," Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani told Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Seated on the same table was his brother, apart from Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry and State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya. Jaitley was addressing the Mumbai Next MMR Transformation conclave, organised by the Maharashtra government and Mumbai First here, through video conference. In his reply, Jaitley said the government was exploring several options of infrastructure financing in India and that a number of international bodies were ready to fund infrastructure development projects. He added the government was keenly considering these funding sources. While praising Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for honesty, Jaitley also had a word of advice. Apart from being honest, the government had to be decisive, he said. On his part, Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani told the chief minister about his experience of decisions being delayed due to an indecisive bureaucracy and the need to protect officials who wanted to take quick decisions. "Through the past many years, we have faced a number of obstacles in decision-making," he said, adding he was speaking as someone who had lived and invested in Mumbai. Fadnavis responded by saying he would bring about a transparent process to ring-fence officials. Both the Ambani brothers have announced a number of infrastructure projects in and around Mumbai, including a world-class convention centre in Bandra Kurla Complex by RIL, but very few have actually fructified. RIL's special economic zone project failed to take off due to land acquisition problems in Raigarh, while a second SEZ near Mumbai is stuck due to lack of clarity in SEZ norms. The first phase of the Mumbai Metro, set up by Anil Ambani's Reliance Infrastructure, was marred by cost overruns and run-ins with the government over fares. Subsequently, the company withdrew from the second and larger phase, citing inordinate delay. Anil Ambani also withdrew from Mumbai's sea link project on the same grounds. The brothers had also bid for a trans-harbour sea link between Navi Mumbai and Mumbai under the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government, but their bid was rejected. Reliance Infrastructure is also the power supplier to more than half of this city. Participating in the conclave, some of India Inc's leading bankers said making Mumbai a financial hub would take at least a decade. SBI's Bhattacharya said the Indian currency should be made fully convertible and facilities should be created for it. "However, for this, the economy needs to look up and that will happen only in the next 7-10 years, not immediately," she added. Sunil Kaushal, Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered, India, pitched for strong infrastructure to support development. "We will take a long time to develop into a global financial centre. We need to solve transport bottlenecks in Mumbai and have lifestyle facilities for people working in and around these areas," he said.
RIL is setting up infrastructure for a full-fledged horizontal e-commerce offering - internally called the New Commerce - to simultaneously launch pan-India by October-November.
Mukesh Ambani has got company of at least 29 fellow corporate executives, including four from his own group Reliance Industries, in terms of annual salaries running into crores of rupees for the latest fiscal.
This marks the second billion-dollar investment by Silver Lake in a Reliance subsidiary after the $1.35 billion investment in Jio Platforms.
Major investment plans for a fabrication facility have put off due to the slowdown. A full-fledged fab requires an investment of $3-4 bn. Moreover, even if a fab were to come up now in the country, the technology would be rendered obsolete by the time it starts production. "If the government was serious about making the electronics manufacturing ecosystem robust, why is it sitting on proposals? How can you sustain a company's interest for so long?" asks an industry source.
Fadnavis's comments in the Maharashtra Assembly led to an uproar in the House, with the Shiv Sena raising the issue of alleged suicide of Dadra and Nagar Haveli Lok Sabha member Mohan Delkar.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday hinted at rolling out 5G telecom services in the second half of 2021 and said policy steps are needed to accelerate the early rollout of ultra-high-speed 5G services that are affordable and available everywhere. Ambani, whose four-year-old telecom venture Jio has captured the No.1 spot offering free voice calling and data at dirt-cheap rates, also pitched for developing hardware manufacturing in India, saying the nation cannot rely on imports in such a critical area. 5G is the 5th generation mobile network that enables connecting virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices. India, he said, is today among the best digitally connected nations in the world.
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and Planning Commission Deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will also participate in the India-US Business CEOs Forum Meeting.
Mukesh's television unit has been aggressively wrapping up deals with hundreds of small players in a street-by-street effort to conquer that final hurdle in its cable TV drive
The company had reported a turnover of Rs 10,800 crore (Rs 108 billion) in the previous financial year.
Mukesh Ambani said the Digital India initiative has the potential to transform the lives of 1.2 billion Indians using the power of digital technology.
FutureBrand, which is a global brand transformation company, said part of Reliance's success could be attributed to Mukesh Ambani's recasting of the firm as a one-stop-shop for Indians.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio is India's strongest telecom brand in India, ahead of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Ltd, according to brand intelligence and data insights company TRA. TRA, formerly Trust Research Advisory, in its 'India's Most Desired Brands 2022' ranked companies according to their brand strength. Reliance Jio topped the telecom category, followed by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea Ltd and BSNL.
Prime Minister Modi's remarks on Thursday came during his address to a joint session of the US Congress. He attributed a big part of the success of India-US ties to Indian-Americans.
'We always believe that if you focus on the goal, you will overcome all obstacles. If you focus on the obstacles, you will never achieve your goal.'
From the time he first rose to prominence during the movement against the then UPA government, Arvind Kejriwal has regularly grabbed headlines for his surprise moves and decisions. Here are 10 such instances.
Ambani's $15 bn bet will upend Indian telecom
The number of Indian billionaires has grown by 123 per cent in the 10-year period, reaching 185 in 2024. Their wealth has grown by 263 per cent to $905.6 billion.
Check the Fortune 500 listings, and you will find that the largest companies in the world tend to be in five or six key businesses: energy, automobiles, telecom, IT, banking and retailing.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries on Saturday said it will raise as much as $5 billion in foreign currency-denominated bonds and use the proceeds to retire existing borrowings. In a stock exchange filing, the company said the Finance Committee of the company board at its meeting on Saturday approved a "proposal for issuance of senior unsecured US Dollar-denominated fixed-rate notes from time to time, for an aggregate amount up to $5 billion, in one or more tranches".
As India gets ready to roll out one of the largest vaccine programmes, billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday said his group is working with authorities to provide technology tools and backbone for mass inoculation against COVID-19. Ambani's telecom venture Jio was rolled out four years back, offering free voice calling and dirt-cheap data. Today, Jio is India's largest telecom operator with over 400 million users, each connected to the internet. At a Facebook event, Ambani said the government's digital push kept the country running even during the pandemic and is now helping in the rollout of one of the largest vaccination programmes.
Meet the corporate biggies who will make it big in 2012.
Infrastructure for all-IP next-generation, wireless broadband infrastructure across all the 29 states in India is being laid, says Mukesh.
The International Olympic Committee on Thursday announced that Nita Ambani, has been elected as an individual member of the IOC, and will become India's first woman to join the prestigious body.
Dhirubhai Ambani lived in a one-room chawl in Mumbai with his wife and children and went on to establish the Reliance Group.
Sri Lanka pacer Lasith Malinga has said that he got many fans in India and the rest of the world by playing for the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Mumbai Indians.
According to Ambani's presentation, data rates per GB are around $30 in Japan, $18 in Korea, $15 in China, $7.5 in Spain and $6 in South Africa
Paramount Global has agreed to sell its 13 per cent stake in its Indian TV business to Reliance Industries for Rs 4,286 crore, the Indian firm said on Thursday. In a stock exchange filing, Reliance said it has signed a binding agreement with two subsidiaries of Paramount Global to acquire 13.01 per cent equity stake of Viacom 18 Media Private Limited held by Paramount Global. Similarly, in a filing on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paramount Global said the closing of the transaction is subject to the satisfaction of certain customary conditions, including receipt of applicable regulatory approvals, as well as the completion of a previously announced joint venture involving Reliance, Viacom18 and Star Disney.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the stellar achievements of Indian Americans in his remarks at the state dinner in which he had his high-profile guests often in laughter.
This year's list includes 40 influential people under 40 years of age in five categories -- finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment.
Glimpses of how the stars interacted at the NMACC opening.
Reliance Jio and Facebook will look to use WhatsApp for delivering goods from local neighbourhood kirana stores to consumers before expanding collaboration in education and healthcare sector, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said soon after announcing the mega Rs 43,574 -crore deal. "All of us at Reliance and Jio are delighted to welcome Facebook Inc," he said in a short video message posted on the group's social media handles.
But earnings of main private holding firm get a booster dose from RIL dividend
Walt Disney Co and Reliance Industries on Wednesday announced signing of binding pacts to merge their media operations in India to create a Rs 70,000 crore behemoth. Reliance and its affiliates will hold 63.16 per cent in the combined entity while Disney will hold the remaining 36.84 per cent, the companies said in a statement.
