The PE biggie has committed to pumping money into Jio Platforms, Byju's and Reliance Retail so far this year - all marquee names in their respective sectors.
Isha and Akash, 23, were appointed to the boards of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, the company said.
Will open radio access network technology (O-RAN) disrupt the way 5G networks roll out in the country? After all, it promises to offer a substantially lower capital cost, enables the choice of an array of vendors, and provides more network flexibility - all very important for telcos who expect to invest over Rs 60,000 crore to roll out a pan-India 5G network and that's without spectrum costs. But more importantly, it counters the stranglehold of global telecom gear makers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung over telcos to whom they sell propriety technology and bundled hardware and software.
This season, the nature of the advertising game has changed dramatically with TV and digital rights going to different entities.
SoftBank-backed Inmobi has fired about 50-70 people on performance metrics. According to a source, the employees impacted are from Inmobi and the firm's lock screen-based content provider Glance. This comes even as the company announced that it will skip increments for CY23 and also undertake recruitment only when required. The Inmobi group has a total headcount of 2,600.
The price of diesel sold to bulk users has been hiked by about Rs 25 per litre in line with a near 40 per cent rise in international oil prices, but retail rates at petrol pumps remain unchanged, sources said. Petrol pump sales have jumped by a fifth this month after bulk users like bus fleet operators and malls queued up at petrol bunks to buy fuel rather than the usual practice of ordering directly from oil companies, widening the losses of retailers. Worst hit are private retailers like Nayara Energy, Jio-bp and Shell, who have so far refused to curtail any volume despite a surge in sales.
Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co will invest Rs 6,247.5 crore to buy a 1.4 per cent stake in Reliance Industries Ltd's retail arm -- the billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led firm's third such deal in less than two days.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B ministry) may launch its review of the government's plan to potentially reserve the crucial C-band of radio frequencies for 5G and 6G telecommunication (telecom) use, said officials. While the incumbent broadcasting operators have warned that the plan will leave "precious little spectrum" for broadcasting services, telecom service providers (TSPs) have pressed hard for getting access to the C-band. In multiple letters to the I&B ministry over the past month, the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA) has said the industry would be left with precious little spectrum for broadcasting services if the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) further allocates the scant C-band for 5G.
Telecom service providers (TSPs) have begun to monitor and prevent spam calls since May 1, with the help of an artificial intelligence and machine language-based system acting on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) latest directive on the matter, its officials told Business Standard. Touted as the first big technological measure against the growing menace of unsolicited commercial communications, all TSPs have confirmed to Trai that they have rolled out the AI/ML tool. The filter system works on the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform used by TSPs, and is set to go for incremental updates, rules for which will soon be released, they added.
This marks the second billion-dollar investment by Silver Lake in a Reliance subsidiary after the $1.35 billion investment in Jio Platforms.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Tuesday posted a 49.2 per cent jump in its consolidated net profit to Rs 3,005.6 crore for the January-March quarter of 2022-23 on the back of new 4G customers and strong growth in average revenue per user (ARPU). The company had recorded a net profit of Rs 2,007.8 crore in the same period a year ago. Bharti Airtel's consolidated revenue from operations grew by 14.31 per cent to Rs 36,009 crore during the reported quarter from Rs 31,500.3 crore in the March 2022 quarter.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday announced to raise Rs 7,350 crore from two investors -- Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and Global alternative asset firm TPG -- by selling a stake in group's retail arm.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Monday introduced daughter Isha as leader of his conglomerate's retail business as he details succession planning at India's most valuable firm. Ambani had previously named son Akash as chairman of the group's telecom arm, Reliance Jio. At Reliance Industries Ltd's 45th annual shareholders meeting, Ambani introduced Isha as leader of retail business as he invited her to speak on integrating WhatsApp with the retail business.
'The competition between the two is definitely going to be of great interest to the Indian market.'
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 46 per cent jump in net profit for the three months ended June on the back of bumper earnings from oil and telecom businesses. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate's consolidated net profit rose to Rs 17,955 crore during April-June period -- the first quarter of 2022-23 fiscal year -- from Rs 12,273 crore in the year-ago period, it said a stock exchange filing.
Delhi Capitals will look to do the double when they host Sunrisers Hyderabad in their IPL contest at home on Saturday.
'I'm very much against petrol and diesel....'' 'I travel in an electric car.' 'I have had a really good experience with it.'
Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, run by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, on Tuesday raised Rs 5,512.50 crore from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), taking the total fundraise to Rs 37,710 crore in less than four weeks.
American online major Amazon seems to be almost doubling its India investment going by the company's recent announcement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to the US. From the time the Seattle-headquartered company started its India journey in 2013, its investment into the country is pegged at $11 billion or roughly $1.1 billion a year. By committing a fresh round of $15 billion by 2030, the Jeff Bezos-founded company's investment would go up to more than $2 billion a year over the next seven years.
Adani Data Networks said it plans to create a private 5G network for its operations. However, it acquired the spectrum in the last 5G auction alongside three telecom companies. Subsequently, it was granted a unified licence for access services, which enables it to provide telecom services in the country.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for rolling out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its UPI-based payments services in India -- a global first -- with about a million users.
Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have enough capacity to absorb over 113.9 million Vodafone Idea subscribers who are on 4G if Vodafone Idea has to shut operations.
Measures reportedly being mulled by the government to ease telecom industry's stress and fundraising may give Vodafone Idea the much-needed breather, but structural issue undermining the sector can be fixed only with "sizable" tariff hike for 4G prepaid customers, according to a note by Edelweiss. It further observed that as Voda Idea's large liabilities are falling due, and given the impending launch of JioPhone Next (whose rollout timeline has now been pushed to before Diwali), "the sooner the government measures as well as tariff hikes are rolled out, the better it is". It is pertinent to mention here that the telecom sector has been keenly watching out for the relief package, which could include redefinition of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) to exclude non-telecom items, cut in levies such as Spectrum Usage Charges and easier terms and conditions for surrendering radiowaves to the government.
The question mark over Vodafone Idea's survival is gone after the government's telecom package, managing director and chief executive officer Ravinder Takkar said in an interaction recently. The extended moratorium for spectrum payments and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues has indeed ensured that Vodafone Idea survives, at least for the time being, but questions remain. Answers to those questions may determine the future of Vodafone Idea and its power to stay in a difficult telecom market in the coming years.
Investment by US PE firm KKR will add fire to Ambani's battle for dominance in the retail market that is also being eyed by Jeff Bezos' Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart.
After record fund raising, Reliance Industries now has a strong balance sheet with high liquidity that will support growth plans for its three hyper-growth engines, Jio, Retail and oil-to-chemicals, according to the firm's chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani. In the company's latest annual report released on Wednesday, he said the company sold minority stakes in Jio Platforms -- the unit that houses its telecom and digital business -- and retail arm for almost Rs 2 lakh crore and raised another Rs 53,124 crore through rights issue.
The Department of Telecommunications (DOT) on Wednesday received over Rs 17,873 crore from companies towards 5G spectrum dues. Nearly half the amount (Rs 8312.4 crore) was paid by Bharti Airtel, which made advance payments for four years to free up cash for future investments. Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea paid Rs 7,864 crore and Rs 1,680 crore, respectively.
Rajasthan Royals would be banking on their near-perfect combinations in almost all departments of the game to put up another commanding performance when they take on a strong Punjab Kings.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 22.5 per cent rise in net profit for the quarter ended March on the back of bumper oil refining margins, steady growth in telecom and digital services and strong momentum in the retail business. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate's consolidated net profit rose to Rs 16,203 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2022 from Rs 13,227 crore, the firm said in a statement. Net profit, however, fell 12.6 per cent sequentially -- breaking a six-quarter chain of quarter-on-quarter improvement.
Mobile operators with the exception of Reliance Jio are in a much worse financial condition than expected earlier. The combined borrowing of the four incumbent operators - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) - reached an all-time high of Rs 3.85 trillion at the end of March this year. The companies' combined debt was up 22.4 per cent year-on-year last financial year against 8.3 per cent growth in their borrowing in the previous year. As a result, the incumbent operators' debt-equity ratio shot up to an unsustainably high level of 6.83X at the end of March this year from 2.3X at the end of March 2020. This was largely due to big losses reported by all these companies last financial year. The four incumbent operators racked up combined net losses of Rs 70,000 crore in FY21.
'...you start running after the star.' 'If the star says yes to the film, the ecosystem supports it.' 'The biggest cog in the wheel of the ecosystem is the audience and we forget that.'
Consumers can expect a 5G launch in the country soon. Telecom companies (telcos) say if auctions take place on time - the target is July - they would be able to offer some services in a few cities by the end of this year and a full roll-out from 2023. But the question is: will 5G turn the tables for telcos financially? Will average revenue per user (ARPU) improve? Will mobile consumers upgrade to 5G quickly and pay more? Will the expanded functions that 5G enables drum up sufficient revenues? In simple terms, will telcos make more money?
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries Ltd's retail arm on Thursday raised Rs 9,555 crore from Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, taking total fundraise in the last two months to Rs 47,265 crore. PIF will take a 2.04 per cent stake in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL), the Indian firm said in a statement. The investment values RRVL, the retail arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, at a pre-money equity value of Rs 4.587 lakh crore.
In a curious move, Reliance Industries' (RIL) executive director and Mukesh Ambani's trusted aide PMS Prasad pledged 600,000 shares of the company last month, which is 93.75 per cent of the total shares he owns in RIL. Prasad owned a total of 640,000 RIL shares and his compensation stood at Rs 11.15 crore in FY20.
Many CEOs said they plan to give special leave to women employees so as to encourage their participation in the workforce.
As many as 2,000 chips are annually designed in India by semi-conductor and fabless companies, Intel India managing director Prakash Mallya said in a conversation with Business Standard. Mallya was reiterating the importance of India in the semi-conductor sweepstakes. "As much as 90 per cent of the semi-conductor companies have a design footprint in India.
Campa is set to take on its competition, which pushed it out of the aerated drinks business in the late 1990s, but this time with a new owner - Reliance Industries. Campa's entry comes at a time when aerated drinks as a category is already saturated. But experts say this could give rise to competition in the segment, eventually causing the space to grow.
This equity capital infusion is the country's largest-ever FDI.
The government expects the rollout of 5G services to start from early October in the country, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday. "As soon as the spectrum auction ends, within a few days itself, we will allocate the spectrum. "We expect that the 5G roll-out will happen from the beginning of October and within a year or so, we should have a good rollout in the country," the Union Minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters in New Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the 6th India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan in Delhi and launched 5G services. The 5G telecom services seek to provide seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency and highly reliable communications system. The three major telecom operators of the country demonstrated one use case each in front of the prime minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India.