Bengal has bagged over ₹91,000 crore in investment proposals on the first day of the Bengal Global Business Summit, the state’s flagship industry event.
Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani has proposed to double his investment in the state across digital infrastructure and services, retail, clean energy and the artisan economy.
“In 2016, when I first attended this summit, Reliance’s investments stood below ₹2,000 crore. Today, in less than a decade, our investments in Bengal have increased 20 times, and we are invested over ₹50,000 crore,” Ambani said.
“We shall double this investment by the end of this decade. More importantly, our investments have created over one lakh direct jobs and spurred significant economic growth in Bengal.
“As we speak, Jio is building Bengal’s first cable landing station in Digha, so that we have fiber connectivity directly into Bengal. It will be commissioned early next year and will become a gateway to Bengal’s digital leadership in eastern India. We have modified our data centre in Calcutta to a state-of-the-art AI-ready data centre, and that will be ready in the next nine months.
“At present, we operate a network of over 1,300 stores in Bengal, spanning an area of over 8 million square feet. We plan to expand our network to 1,700 stores in the next three years, operating 2.2 million square feet of warehouses in the state,” Ambani said.
He said that under Swadesh, a new initiative supporting India’s arts and crafts, artisans from Bengal, will have a platform to make their products available both in India and across the world.
“For example, we are selling through our Indian and global retail and Swadesh stores, which we will open in London, New York and Paris, Bengal’s finest Jamdani and Taant sarees, Baluchari, Murshidabad, Bishnupur and Tussar silk sarees, Kantha sarees, Muslin as well as jute and khadi products made in Bengal,” Ambani said.
“Similarly, in food products, we have partnered several regional brands such as Bisk Farm, Anmol, Raja, City Gold, Prabhuji and Bishwa Bangla, which are household names in Bengal. But I believe they will be popular names across India and the world, providing all these brands unprecedented distribution in India and globally,” he added.
Ambuja Neotia group chairman Harshavardhan Neotia announced investments of ₹15,000 crore over the next five years.
This includes investments of ₹1,500 crore in healthcare, ₹2,700 crore in hospitality and tourism, ₹5,000 crore in a golf-themed township and ₹6,500 crore in residential and commercial development.
Sanjiv Goenka, chairman RP-Sanjiv Goenka group, announced investments across energy, healthcare and education sectors. “In addition to the ₹40,000 crore that we have invested in the state we have another ₹10,000 crore in the pipeline under implementation.”
ITC chairman Sanjiv Puri said that ITC has invested over ₹7,500 crore in the state across sectors.
Besides plans to double the number of hotels in Bengal from the current six, Puri announced the inauguration of projects such as ITC Infotech Global AI Centre of Excellence at the newly constructed ITC Green Centre in Rajarhat and personal care unit in Uluberia, premised in ‘ITC Neemgarh’, a facility which also houses over 1,000 neem trees of 40 different ecotypes.
