Jio Fiber services to start on commercial basis from September this year, says Muksesh Ambani at RIL's AGM

He said RIL is the only diversified multi-sector Indian enterprise with three major growth engines in one single corporate entity – Oils to Chemicals division, Jio and Retail.

He said that Jio crossed the 340 million subscriber mark to remain the world's fastest growing digital services company.

He said that the company’s two consumer businesses now collectively contribute nearly 32% to the consolidated EBITDA, up from 2% five years ago.

The third growth engine is the Oils to Chemicals business, he said.

Highlighting Reliance's position, he pointed out –

The company is the largest exporter at Rs 2,24,391 crore exports to 107 countries, accounting for 9.8% of India's total merchandise exports.

Highest payer of customs and excise duty in the private sector at Rs 26,379 crore.

Highest payer of GST among all public and private sector companies at Rs 67,320 crore.

Highest payer of Income tax in the private sector at Rs. 12,191 crore

Excerpts from his address:

"Oils to Chemicals Business

It is formed by combining our petrochemicals and refining businesses.

At Jamnagar, we now operate with a Complexity Index of over 21.1, which is the highest globally for a refinery.

Higher complexity signifies a high degree of integration of units, feed flexibility, product manufacturing capability and, consequently, the ability to maximize margins.

Our Oils to Chemicals business achieved revenue of Rs 5.7 lakh crore, exports of Rs 2.2 lakh crore and EBITDA of Rs 52,041 crore.

We processed 68.3 million tons of crude during the year maintaining our record of over 100% operating rate.

We achieved a GRM of $9.2 per barrel, maintaining a margin of $4.2 per barrel over the Singapore complex.

We derived the full benefits of Refinery Off-Gas Cracker by increasing polymer production by 18% to 5.8 MMT.

The Ethane sourcing investment achieved superior returns as we capitalized on the feedstock flexibility in a volatile environment.

All units of the Gasification complex have been safely commissioned.

The Gasification complex is tightly integrated with the refinery and petrochemical complex at Jamnagar.

Our focus is now on completing this integration, capacity utilization and efficiency.

The Butyl Rubber project with equity and technology from SIBUR of Russia, one of the global leaders in this business, is nearing completion and will be commissioned this year.

Reliance and BP signed a Joint-venture in the petroleum retailing business.

In a new initiative, BP is acquiring 49% stake in our petro-retail business.

Reliance will get Rs 7,000 crore from BP for this transaction.

Saudi Aramco and Reliance have agreed to form a long-term Partnership in our Oil to Chemicals (O2C) division.

In terms of the understanding between the parties, Saudi Aramco will invest in Reliance for a 20% stake in Oil to

Chemicals division at an Enterprise Value of US$ 75 Billion for the O2C division.

This investment by Saudi Aramco is subject to due diligence, definitive agreements, regulatory and other customary approvals.

This Partnership will cover all of RIL's Refining and Petrochemicals assets, including 51% of the Petroleum Retail JV.

Saudi Aramco will also supply 500 KBPD of Crude Oils on a long term basis to RIL's Jamnagar refinery.

This signifies perfect synergy between the world's largest oil producer and the world's largest integrated refinery and petrochemicals complex.

Since its inception, our Jamnagar refinery has been processing Saudi oil every single day for 20 years.

Oil and Gas Exploration And Production

With Reliance de-emphasising its Shale Gas business in the USA, we are currently focused only on India.

In our coal bed methane blocks, we are focusing on augmenting production.

The Joint Venture with BP will play a major role as a producer of natural gas.

With world class deep-water infrastructure in the east coast of India, the JV is uniquely positioned to monetize over 3 trillion cubic feet of discovered resources in the KG D6 block.

Our JV has committed an investment of Rs 35,000 crore in the three deep water fields in this block.

The projects to develop these gas-fields are amongst the most complex, being executed anywhere in the world.

These will commence production from the first half of 2020.

With an expected peak production of one billion cubic feet per day, equivalent to nearly 30% of India's current indigenous gas production, the JV will emerge as a major contributor to India's energy security.

Reliance Jio

On 5th September this year JIO turns three years old.

Today JIO's customer base has crossed 340 million users.

And still we are signing up more than 10 million new customers each month.

The company has invested nearly Rs 3.5 lakh crore towards creating a state-of-the-art digital infrastructure across India, with the largest optical fiber footprint.

Recently we have divested about Rs 1.17 lakh crore of hard infrastructure into separate infrastructure investment trusts or InvITs to better monetize and unlock value from these assets.

The core and aggregation layers of our converged network have been 5G ready since day one.

And because of our early adoption of the ongoing enhancements to LTE technology our wireless network is already 4G PLUS.

And we can upgrade this to 5G at minimum incremental cost.

The investment cycle for Jio is now complete.

Only marginal investments in access are now required to grow capacity to meet growing demand.

We have so far fired up just one of the engines of revenue generation for Jio, namely mobile broadband.

And now we are ready to kickstart four more engines of connectivity revenue for Jio.

Internet Of Things Or Iot All Over India.

Home Broadband.

Enterprise Broadband.

and Broadband For Small and Medium Businesses.

Revenues from each of these engines will kick-in within this financial year itself.

Internet of Things.

JIO has developed an innovative service on its pan-India 4G network called Narrowband Internet-of-Things or NBIoT, for short.

Using NBIoT data from billions of smart sensors whether residential, industrial or public can be collected from across India with the highest reliability and lowest cost.

To take just one example, there are over 300 million electricity meters which need to be connected digitally for real-time monitoring and for giving consumers full visibility and control of cost and quality.

And going forward each home and business premise will have dozens of connected devices.

Within another 2 years, it is estimated that there will be more than 2 Billion Connected IOT devices in our country.

Jio aims to connect at least 1 billion of these on JIO's IoT platform.

This translates into Rs 20,000 crore per year revenue opportunity for JIO.

Jio's IoT platform will be commercially available starting 1st January, 2020.

Home broadband.

Last year I had shared with you JIO's plans for optical-fiber-based Fixedline Boradband service – called JIOFIBER.

Starting August 15th of last year, we invited registrations of interest from across India so that we could prioritize JIOFIBER rollout into localities with the highest interest.

We received over 15 million registrations from nearly 1,600 towns.

And based on these registrations, we have drawn up a plan to reach 20 million residences and 15 million business establishments in these 1,600 towns.

Over the past year, we have built significant momentum in our JIOFIBER rollout and we are confident that we will complete our network rollout within the next 12 months.

With JIOFIBER you get lightning fast broadband speeds of up to 1 GBPS.

You get a landline phone connection, at no additional cost.

And you get a digital set-top-box.

Then there is television which is still at the heart of the Indian home.

Television services in India is a classic small-businesses success story, where Local Cable Operators or LCOs played a pioneering role.

In recent years, competition from DTH operators have threatened the viability of nearly 1 lakh LCOs who still operate across India.

As firm supporters of local and small businesses JIO wanted to ensure that these LCOs continued to serve their communities.

Earlier this year, RIL acquired controlling stakes in three leading Cable MSOs – Hathway, DEN and GTPL who have direct relationships with over 30,000 LCOs.

Over the past months we have worked with our MSOs to upgrade their infrastructure to world-class standards.

After these upgrades, our LCO partners will now be able to offer the largest bouquet of High-Definition channels to customers with better features, reliability and customer experience than even DTH.

We have designed our JIO set-top-box to accept the broadcast cable TV signals from our LCO partners.

So that with every JIOFIBER home all our LCO partners will continue to have a steady stream of revenue for their broadcast TV business.

Small and medium businesses:  JIOFIBER enables a powerful combination of fixed-line connectivity and cloud applications

Large enterprises: Today cloud-based solutions provide out-of-the-box capabilities which are easier, faster and cheaper to adopt.

JIOFIBER and JIO's cloud solutions level the playing field for Indian enterprises enabling them to accelerate their digital transformation and compete globally using the very same technologies that are used by global majors.

When is JIOFIBER going to be available, and how much will it cost?

Today I want to announce that starting 5th September of this year - on the third anniversary of Jio's launch - we are launching JIOFIBER services on a commercial basis.

JioFiber will launch with a line-up of simple and easy to understand tariff plans.

On performance - the average fixed-line download speed in the US which is the most developed economy is around 90 Mbps.

In India even the most basic JIOFIBER plan starts with 100 Mbps speed and we have plans all the way up to 1 Gbps or 1000 Mbps.

JioFiber plans will be priced between Rs 700 to Rs 10,000 per month to suit every budget and every need.

Customers should pay for only one service, either voice or data. Not both.

With this, I am pleased to announce that voice calls from HOME to any Indian operator - mobile or fixed - will be absolutely free forever.

On Fixed-Line International Voice Calling - we are today ending the era of high international calling rates on landline By announcing the lowest fixed line rates for International Calling through 2 initiatives.

First, the default tariffs on your Jio HOME PHONE will be one-fifth to one-tenth of existing industry tariffs.

Second, we are announcing an unlimited international calling pack at Rs 500 per month, to US and Canada, thereby making it easy for families to connect.

JIOFIBER plans will come bundled with subscriptions to most leading premium OTT applications.

Premium JIOFIBER customers will be able to watch movies in their living rooms the same day these movies are released in theatres

We plan to launch this service in the middle of 2020.

JIO POSTPAID PLUS will deliver a platinum-grade service and product experience.

Some of the unique features of this service are:

One, India's first priority SIM-setup service at home, where your connection will be moved to Jio by visiting your home.

Two, Seamless Data and Voice Connectivity across all your devices, both at home and outside.

Three, Unprecedented Family plans – one data plan for better control on GBs and sharing within your family.

Four, International roaming at a fraction of a cost with superior service experience.

Five, Phone upgrades at preferential rates.

And six, all your home solutions on your phone.

The complete details of our tariffs will be available from 5th September 2019 on Jio.com and MyJio application.

JIOFIBER customers who opt for our annual plans which we call JIO-FOREVER plans, will get an HD OR 4K LED television and a 4K set-top-box absolutely free.

Digital Platforms and Solutions

JIO has over 6000 software engineers and is also investing in a growing ecosystem of technology start-ups.

As on date we have invested in 14 start-ups that embody the JIO DNA and have developed unique capabilities in their respective fields with a total of 1500 talented engineers.

[The company is also working] on Blockchain technology all over India.

Using Blockchain we can deliver unprecedented security, trust, automation and efficiency to almost any type of transaction.

Over the next 12 months, JIO will install across India one of the largest blockchain networks in the world with tens of thousands of nodes operational on day one.

Edge computing and Virtual and Mixed Reality content.

This creates exciting new possibilities for entertainment, shopping, gaming and most importantly for education.

Delivering immersive content to hundreds of millions of users requires a well-integrated solution spanning connectivity, data storage and real-time computing.

And we need to deploy such solutions at the edge of the network or in other words, closer to where our users are.

Today, JIO is setting up a pan-India Edge Computing and Content Distribution network again starting with tens of thousands of nodes.

And finally, Cloud Infrastructure across India.

There are just a handful of companies in the world who can be considered at the cutting-edge of cloud technologies.

Today, MICROSOFT's Cloud platform AZURE is one of the world's leading cloud platforms.

Today, I am glad to announce that Jio and Microsoft have entered into a globally unique long-term alliance to accelerate the digital transformation of our country.

As part of this alliance, while Jio sets up a network of large world-class datacenters across India, Microsoft will bring its Azure cloud platform into Jio's datacenters.”

CEO of MICROSOFT, Satya Nadella, also addressed the gathering.

Ge said that today, digital technology is transforming every place, every industry, everything.

This rapid change is being driven by massive technology shifts – across the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.

“Our long-term partnership combines the power of our technology – including Azure, Azure AI and Office 365 – with Jio's connectivity and digital solutions – which as you know are among the most used and fastest-growing in the world,” said Nadella.

Together, they will offer comprehensive technology solutions – from compute and storage, to connectivity and productivity – to SMBs everywhere in the country, he said.

With this step, I am certain that the two to five million micro, small and medium enterprises will propel towards

Talking of Reliance Retail, Ambani said that the divison’s turnover crossed Rs 1,30,000 crore last year.

The Retail business has registered a 7-fold increase in revenue and a 14-fold increase in profit in the last six years.

He also spoke about Reliance's New Commerce initiative.

He said that New Commerce is a massive new business opportunity of USD 700 billion.

“However, for Reliance, it is the greatest opportunity to promote inclusive growth and shared wealth at the bottom of India's commerce and retail pyramid,” said Ambani. “The main purpose of New Commerce is to completely transform the unorganized retail market, which accounts for 90% of India's retail industry.”

He also touched upon the company’s media and entertainment business.

“Our 72 television channels reach 800 million Indians, representing more than 95% of the TV-viewing universe,” he said.

He also highlighted the work being undertaken by Reliance Foundation, in areas such as Rural Transformation programmes, providing relief and rehabilitation to people impacted by natural calamities in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, and presently in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, etc.