Going head to head
Mukesh Ambani is chairman and MD of Reliance Industries and has been in the role since 2005. The 11th richest man in the world, at 65 he is stepping up to the plate to take on the likes of Amazon and Flipkart as they target the Indian market, as well as his nemesis in the renewables market in India: the richest man in Asia – ahead of Ambani – Gautam Adani.
To rise to that challenge, Reliance is turning to acquisitions rather than its traditional route of organic growth. Ambani’s 30-year-old son, Akash, was announced as chair of Reliance Jio, the company’s telecom unit, while Akash’s twin sister Isha runs the retail business. There is talk of a succession plan incoming, but it may well be that responsibilities are being shared around as the giant company goes through major change.
From fuel to tech
Reliance Industries is a Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate, which is the largest publicly traded company in India by market cap and the largest Indian company by revenue – a record $102bn (£84bn) for the year ended 31 March 2022. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation for the year was $16.6bn.
Over the past two decades it has transformed itself from being a business focused on the oil and gas sector to one focused on tech and telecoms, retail and sustainable energy. In the last financial year, it made more than $3bn of acquisitions worldwide, and Reliance Retail acquired delivery start-up Dunzo, and robotics company Addverb in January this year.
Electric dreams
On New Year’s Eve 2021, Reliance Industries announced that its subsidiary Reliance New Energy Solar (RNES) had acquired UK battery technology company Faradion from Mercia Asset Management. The £100m deal came with an undertaking from RNES for a further £25m growth capital investment to speed up the commercialisation of the Sheffield-based company’s patented sodium ion battery technologies. The tech is said to be more sustainable than lithium and the plan is to fully deploy it in the electric vehicle (EV) charging market – a market that Reliance has invested in heavily since the acquisition.
Faradion CEO James Quinn said he hadn’t looked for a trade sale, but was “seduced” by the Reliance offering and hoped the new partnership would “speed up the transformation of the global energy market”.
Through its joint venture with BP – Jio-bp – Reliance is rolling out EV charging across India, with a view to taking the know-how it gains further afield. The joint venture is working with TVS Motors on charging for electric scooters; Indian real estate companies Omaxe and Nexus Malls on EV charging infrastructure across the country; and food delivery company Zomato on the electrification of its fleet.
Reliance is pooling most of the battery tech it has acquired at its state-of-the-art manufacturing factory in Jamnagar. In March this year it also acquired Netherlands-based global battery producer Lithium Werks for $61bn.
EY, FTI Consulting, Fieldfisher and Linklaters advised on the Faradion deal, which took 45 days from start to completion.
Global ambitions
Reliance has shown a willingness to enter into deal structures that suit its ambitions – joint venture, acquisitions and corporate VC-style investments.
In February 2022, it made a $200m Series D investment in Glance, a live content business based in Asia, which already had Google and Mithril Capital as backers. This investment will see it open up new markets outside Asia, where it already boasts more than 400 million users.
The same month, Reliance invested $15m for a 25% stake in Silicon Valley-based deep tech start-up, Two Platforms. With that, Reliance was moving into the Metaverse.