With this investment, Jio Platforms has raised Rs 115,693.95 crore from some of the leading global investment powerhouses at a time when the world is deeply impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The government is looking at a time frame within the first two weeks of July to kick off and complete the upcoming 5G auctions, according to discussions between officials and stakeholders. It is expected that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will give its recommendations on the base price by March, after which the necessary cabinet clearances will be given. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had earlier looked at undertaking the auction in the first quarter of 2022 but decided to push it back. Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had also said that the auctions are likely to take place in April-May.
After monetising Jio Platforms -- which houses the firm's telecom arm and digital ventures, richest Indian Mukesh Ambani is looking to rope in investors in the retail business.
Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal on Thursday said he had reached out to Vodafone's Nick Read after bold telecom reforms were announced by the government and will also speak to RIL's Mukesh Ambani, as the telecom czar vowed to take the lead in bringing the industry together to unleash India's telecom dream. Mittal exhorted the industry to collaborate in areas such as infrastructure sharing to reduce costs but vehemently ruled out possibility of any cartelisation among players. Amid reports of its potential tie-ups with handset makers to counter Jio's upcoming ultra low-cost smartphone, Mittal said Airtel is in a state of "readiness" on an affordable smartphone "should a need arise".
A rare bonhomie among three private telecom companies in raising tariffs coming on the back of a bailout package by the government may have helped the telecom sector avert a crisis but the challenges haven't ceased to exist as the industry faces a cash-guzzling task of rolling out 5G networks in the coming months. The sector that provides direct and indirect employment to millions is projected to see Rs 1.3 lakh crore to Rs 2.3 lakh crore of investments in the coming years in creating robust infrastructure and building telecom and network products that have been incentivised by the government through PLI and other initiatives. After years of cut-throat competition and the apex court ruling on payment of past statutory dues left some players in the lurch, billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel and struggling Vodafone Idea almost in tandem raised tariffs, taking the plunge they had long been talking about.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has slapped a penalty of Rs 2,000 crore on Vodafone Idea and Rs 1,050 crore on Bharti Airtel based on sector regulator Trai's recommendation five years ago, according to sources. The DoT has given three weeks time to the telecom operators to pay the penalty, a source said while sharing the content of the demand notice served to the companies on Thursday. When contacted Bharti Airtel spokesperson said, "We are deeply disappointed with the arbitrary and unfair demand based on Trai recommendations of 2016 relating to provisions of point of interconnect to a new operator.
Reliance Industries on Friday reported more than doubling of its March quarter net profit to Rs 13,227 crore as improvement in petrochemical and consumer business countered continued weakness in refining business.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries on Friday reported a 43 per cent jump in its September quarter net profit as its businesses from oil to retail fired on all cylinders, growing both sequentially and on a year-on-year basis. Net profit of Rs 13,680 crore, or Rs 20.88 per share, in July-September compared with Rs 9,567 crore, or Rs 14.84 a share, in the same period a year back, the company said in a statement. While better realisation and a sharp rise in crude oil prices benefited the old-economy business, retail saw footfalls at stores reach pre-Covid levels and per user earning from telecom business rose.
Strategic direction post-COVID-19 and further details on asset monetisation are key expectations from the 43rd AGM of RIL, analysts said.
Adani Enterprises' proposed Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) fundraising via fresh issue of equity shares through a public offer would be the fourth biggest by Indian companies, excluding banks and non-banking financial companies.
Live commerce, quick commerce, group buying, WhatsApp commerce, dukaantech have made their mark.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has started a limited test use of WhatsApp to connect customers to grocery stores, days after Facebook decided to invest USD 5.7 billion in digital assets controlled by the company. JioMart, an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, "has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders" in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Credit Suisse said in a report.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday pitched for using the USO Fund to subsidise smartphones for select groups to help penetrate the digital revolution and said India should make the rollout of 5G or the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks a national priority. As much as 5 per cent of the licence fee paid by telecom operators goes to the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, which was set up in April 2002 for achieving universal service objectives by providing access to telephone services in rural and remote areas and creation of infrastructure for mobile services and broadband in these areas. However, according to the CAG, less than half of the funds so collected are transferred for the said purpose.
Flipkart Group on Monday said it has raised $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in funding led by GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Walmart, valuing the e-commerce giant at $37.6 billion. The company, which competes with Amazon, Reliance Industries' JioMart and others in the burgeoning Indian e-commerce market, said it will continue to make deeper investments across people, technology, supply chain and infrastructure to address the requirements of a rapidly growing consumer base in the country. The current funding round has also seen participation from sovereign funds DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Khazanah Nasional Berhad as well as marquee investors Tencent, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton and Tiger Global.
Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 7 per cent drop in its June quarter net profit as retail business got hit by the second wave of COVID infections.
India's traditional companies are now moving full scale into the renewable and alternative energy space that had been dominated by smaller players over the past decade. Companies such as government-owned NTPC and the Adani and the Tata groups restructured their businesses well in time to become major players in the green space. At the same time, other conventional companies, such as Larsen & Toubro and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), which have a presence both in the energy sector as well as myriad other activities - construction, technology and retailing - are tying up with new-age companies to hitch a ride to a greener path.
Reliance Industries on Friday reported a 41.5 per cent jump in its third quarter net profit as oil, retail and telecom businesses fired on all cylinders. Net profit of Rs 18,549 crore in October-December compared with Rs 13,101 crore a year back, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Income from operations rose to Rs 1.91 lakh crore from Rs 1.28 lakh crore.
The long-awaited high-speed 5G services are expected to be rolled out in about a month, Minister of State for Telecom Devusinh Chauhan said on Monday. Addressing the inaugural event of the International Telecommunication Union's Regional Standardisation Forum (RSF) for Asia and Oceania region, Chauhan said India is likely to deploy indigenously developed and manufactured 5G telecom gears by end of this year for 5G services. "In about a month, 5G mobile services will roll out in the country, which will have multiplier effects on the development of all sectors.
Based on industry estimates, telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and BSNL, are expected to invest over $10 billion on buying 5G telecom equipment in the next five years as they transition from non-standalone networks to standalone 5G networks.
As many as 3.2 lakh shareholders attended the meeting on the newly-minted JioMeet platform from 550 cities in 48 countries.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has directed the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to make a presentation detailing the pros and cons of the controversial Indian 5G standard, also known as 5Gi, which the government has been pushing for. The move comes after serious differences emerged among telcos with regard to the technology's efficacy and implementation.
If Vodafone Idea shuts, a bulk of the high-paying ARPU customers will move to Airtel as Reliance Jio does not have a comprehensive postpaid offering like it, and have aggressively preferred to play in the prepaid market. The bulk of Vodafone Idea customers use 2G phones and only a few of them use data. It will be easier for Airtel to woo these customers as they can shift seamlessly to its 2G network without changing handsets or even SIM cards,
Despite a massive underperformance at the bourses since the last six months, analysts are turning optimistic on Reliance Industries (RIL). Those at Jefferies, for instance, say that the company is a proxy play for India's consumption growth story. The key catalysts for the stock, according to a Jeffries note, include faster-than-expected market share gain in retail, oil-to-chemicals (O2C) stake sale, recovery in gross refining margins (GRM), potential public listing of Jio and even a possible banking licence going ahead. That apart, analysts feel any tariff hike in Reliance Jio (RJio) - its telecom venture - will also aid performance. With balance sheet adequately de-levered, proceeds from a strategic stake sale in the O2C business will create a sizeable war chest for the company, analysts say.
India is likely to become a $40 trillion economy by 2047 -- a 13-fold jump from its current size -- driven primarily by a clean energy revolution and digitalisation, billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Tuesday. Ambani's estimate for the Indian economy, currently the fifth largest in the world behind only the US, China, Japan and Germany, is more optimistic than Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, who last week stated that India will become a $30 trillion economy by 2050 on back of rising consumption and socio-economic reforms. "From a 3 trillion-dollar economy, India will grow to become a 40 trillion-dollar economy by 2047, ranking among the top three economies of the world," Ambani said at the 10th convocation of Pandit Deendayal Energy University in Gandhinagar.
Apart from digital advertising revenue, both companies want to reach out to the 'next billion' Indian customers. After all, around half of the 1.3 billion population is still not on the net and this represents a challenge as well as an opportunity.
Cut-throat competition, high spectrum costs, and frequent flip-flops in government policies have made it difficult for Vodafone to make money in the country.
India's second-largest telecom firm Bharti Airtel on Tuesday reported a net profit of Rs 1,134 crore for the September 2021 quarter, and said it is witnessing strong business momentum with growth in 4G customers and increase in mobile ARPU. This is against a loss (attributable to owners of the parent) of 763.2 crore during the year-ago quarter, the company said in a statement. Its consolidated revenues for the second quarter of FY21 stood at Rs 28,326.4 crore, up 18.8 per cent year-on-year (on a comparable basis) and 13 per cent y-o-y on a reported basis, it added.
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.
Everyday consumerables, such as grocery and order-in food items are the key buyout sector, analysts say, and a major reason for kirana stores' digitisation push.
Google is building voice and text search for over 100 Indian languages and will spend $75 million to support women-led startups in the country, said its CEO Sundar Pichai at the start of his visit to India - a nation that he saw as a big export economy. India, he said, will be a big export economy and it needs to create a balance between safeguarding citizens and enabling companies to innovate with its framework. Pichai first met Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and spoke at a Google for India 2022 event before calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A plunge in fuel demand after the raging pandemic forced people to stay home and stifled the economy dealt a body blow to the firm's traditional cash cow oil refining and petrochemicals, even as consumer-facing businesses, which account for 35 per cent of the oil-to-telecom-to-retail conglomerate's revenues, continued to do well.
Fresh capital will help Flipkart further grow its e-commerce marketplace in India as the world's second-largest internet market begins to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
Internet giant Google will invest USD 1 billion in telecom major Bharti Airtel, which includes equity investment as well as a corpus for potential commercial agreements, to be identified and agreed on mutually agreeable terms over the course of the next five years.
US media reports that Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, could be the latest technology giant to downsize its workforce have triggered trepidation among its 300-400 employees in India, according to people familiar with the matter. "We have not heard much about the impact (of downsizing) on India. "It's a wait-and-watch situation. Certainly, there is uncertainty," said a source.
India's second-largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Tuesday posted more than twofold year-on-year jump in its consolidated net profit for the March quarter to Rs 2,008 crore, buoyed by a lift in average revenue per user and an exceptional gain. The telco said its Q4 scorecard was backed by strong performance delivery across the portfolio and its CEO Gopal Vittal, in a statement, exuded optimism about opportunities in the coming years and Airtel being "well-poised" as a company. Airtel, which competes in the market with Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea, as well as state-owned BSNL/MTNL, promised to maintain razor sharp focus on financial flexibility, optimising the capital structure and finance cost.
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman Mukesh D Ambani on Wednesday said the latest reforms and relief measures will enable the telecom sector to achieve goals set under the Digital India mission. The Cabinet has announced several reforms for the telecom sector, including redefining adjusted gross revenue (AGR) that will now include revenues earned only from telecom services. The government calculates various levies on AGR. "The telecom sector is one of the prime movers of the economy and the key enabler for making India a Digital Society, I welcome the Government of India's announcement of reforms and relief measures that will enable the industry to achieve the goals of Digital India. I thank Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) for this bold initiative," Ambani said.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum may post a combined loss of Rs 10,700 crore in June quarter on selling petrol and diesel at rates below cost, a report said on Monday. While the raw material (crude oil) prices soared in April-June, petrol and diesel prices were not revised, leading to marketing losses which offset strong refining margins, ICICI Securities said in the report. The three state-owned oil marketing companies -- IOC, BPCL and HPCL -- control 90 per cent of the retail petrol and diesel sales in the country.
According to Jio, spectrum worth Rs 3.92 lakh crore is lying unused with the DoT for auction.
Reliance Industries Ltd's focus on the next hypergrowth opportunities in clean tech and its path to decarbonisation has the potential to spur re-rating, raises clarity on investment cycles and reduces investor worry, brokerages said. RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani at the company's 'Green AGM' on Thursday committed Rs 75,000 crore over the next three years to set up an integrated Green Energy Giga Complex across 5,000 acres in Jamnagar, Gujarat which will contain four giga factories. The complex, which would be one of the world's largest renewable manufacturing facilities, would have an integrated solar photovoltaic module factory, an energy storage battery factory, electrolyser manufacturing for hydrogen production, and manufacturing of fuel cells so that hydrogen can be used in transportation.
UV Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd has made the highest bid of Rs 16,000 crore to buy Anil Ambani group's Reliance Communications and Reliance Telecom, which are in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). Last year it was the highest bidder for taking over Aircel's assets for an upfront payment of Rs 150 crore. Surajeet Das Gupta and Dev Chatterjee dig deeper to find out more about this little known company.
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