If Doing Business is an Art, Mukesh Ambani is the Picasso of it! RIL to partner with Saudi Aramco; Launches 'Jio Forever' annual plan

New Delhi, August 12: Moving ahead to shoulder responsibility towards not only private but also public enterprise, country's largest and most profitable company, Reliance Industries Chairman, Mukesh Ambani on Monday made two major announcements enduring sale of 20 per cent stake in oil and chemicals business to Saudi Aramco, a partnership for new cloud data centres and the commercial launch of Jio Giga Fiber from September 5.

 

 

Addressing the gathering at company's 42nd annual general meeting, Ambani said that the company would sell 20 per cent stake in its oil and chemicals business to Saudi oil giant Aramco for about Rs 1.06 lakh crore and nearly half of its fuel retail business to BP of UK for Rs 7,000 crore. “This is the biggest foreign investment in the history of Reliance," he said.

“The deal covers all of Reliance's refining and petrochemicals assets as well as the remainder of stake the firm has in fuel retailing business after selling 49 per cent to BP. Aramco, the world's biggest crude exporter, will also supply Reliance's twin-refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat with 7,00,000 barrels of oil a day on a long-term basis”, he said.

 

RIL chairman also announced the roll out of Jio Giga Fiber from September 5, that is slated to offer free voice calls for life from landline phones, high speed broadband of minimum speed of 100 mbps, free high definition TV and dish. “The plan will start at monthly rental of Rs 700 and go up to Rs 10,000”, he said.

 

"In India even the most basic Jio Giga Fiber will start at 100 mbps at the lowest end. We have plans to go all the way to 1 gbps. We are pricing our plan at one-tenth of global rate to make it accessible for every home”, Ambani added.

 

From mid-2020, the premium Jio Giga Fiber customers will also get to watch new movies on the same day of its release. Premium Jio Giga Fiber customers can watch movies at home the same day they are released in theatres! This service will be launched in the middle of 2020”, he said.

 

Reliance Jio has entered into a long-term alliance with Microsoft to accelerate digital transformation with the launch of new cloud data centres. Jio is therefore set to sprint a network of large world class data centres across India powered by Microsoft's Azure cloud platform.