Mumbai, June 18: Mukesh Ambani, chairman of the $44.6 billion Reliance Industries, today unveiled ambitious plans to turn the country’s biggest private company into a supercharged powerhouse of growth and innovation that will set out to achieve in 10 years what took it three decades.

“It took three decades for Reliance to create an enterprise value of $80 billion (Rs 370,000 crore) … I feel hopeful and confident that Reliance can accomplish value creation of a similar magnitude in less than a decade,” Ambani told shareholders at the 36th annual general meeting here today.

Even as Ambani articulated those grandiloquent ambitions, shareholders and markets were disappointed that his cut-and-dried, business-as-usual speech seemed to make no big deal of last month’s rapprochement with estranged brother Anil.

So, there was no grand gesture of collaboration with the ADAG group — about which the market had been speculating over the past few days and which the shareholders were eagerly waiting to hear.

The RIL stock fell by a little more than a per cent after Ambani finished his 40-minute speech at the Birla Matoshree auditorium in South Mumbai with wife Nita Ambani and mother Kokilaben Ambani seated in the front row. It closed on the BSE at Rs 1,055.25, down 1.5 per cent.

The sense of disappointment was triggered off by the absence of younger sibling Anil Ambani who was expected at the meeting to reaffirm the truce between the erstwhile warring brothers.

The ADAG group stocks suffered a similar fate with Reliance Natural Resources Ltd falling 7.5 per cent, Reliance Power by 3.61 per cent, Reliance Communications by 3.58 per cent and Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Capital by 3.01 per cent and 3.94 per cent, respectively, after the speech concluded.

Isha Ambani, daughter of Mukesh Ambani, at the AGM in Mumbai on Friday. (PTI)

Mukesh Ambani, however, played cool and said, “The Supreme Court upheld, in most parts, the stand of Reliance Industries Ltd….With this legal dispute behind us, we look forward to a harmonious and constructive relationship with ADAG.”

Shareholders were expecting some details of the renegotiated gas pact between the two brothers but were disappointed when Ambani said RIL would supply gas as when the power plants of ADAG were ready to receive it. The caveat: supplies would commence subject to the government granting allocations to these plants like all other customers.

After the annulment of the non-compete agreement between the two brothers, there has been intense speculation on the new areas of business that RIL will enter to deploy its huge cash reserves of over Rs 21,000 crore and expected annual cash flow of roughly Rs 30,000 crore.

Power foray

Ambani chose to announce the group’s entry into power but refrained from providing details on projects in the sector. “We are ready to bring into full play our investment mobilisation capabilities as well as our superior project execution capabilities into a sector that is crying out for transformational mega initiatives,” he said. This includes investments in coal based power generation, hydel projects and in nuclear power when it is opened up.

Telecom plans

In telecom, another new area of business for the demerged RIL, he is gung ho over the potential of broadband. RIL recently bought a 95 per cent stake in Infotel Broadband Services, a company that has secured a pan Indian presence in the just concluded BWA auctions.

“It is possible to pole vault India from the prevailing 1G and 2G technologies to fourth generation and beyond,” said the RIL chairman who reiterated the conglomerate’s plans to focus on an “asset light but partnership heavy” approach.

With just 1 per cent Internet penetration in the country, he is betting on the future of telecom and plans to set up a wireless innovation centre in Mumbai that will “seed an ecosystem” where content creators, application developers and global technology players will come together.

Existing businesses

He also announced mega investments in existing businesses of polyester and petrochemicals, including setting up of a 2.3 million tonnes capacity of purified terephthalic acid (PTA), a 5,40,000 tonnes of polyethylene terephthalate complex at Gandhar and a 3,60,000-tonne polyester filament yarn plant at Silvassa.

The company is accelerating the implementation of an off gas cracker at Jamnagar, creating capacities of polybutadiene rubber at Baroda and styrene butadiene rubber at Hazira. It has also entered into a joint venture with Russian SIBUR for synthetic rubber.

While Ambani announced efforts to step up exploration in KG-D6, he refrained from putting a number on expected production in the region. “It is disappointing that Mukesh Ambani refrained from giving us gas estimates,” said RIL analyst S.P. Tulsian.

The RIL chairman, however, hinted that RIL could enter into more joint ventures in the area of shale gas where it had recently tied up with Atlas Energy in the US.

Retail, a vertical that has come under the scanner for the company, got full attention from the RIL chairman who expects this business to grow 10 times in the next five years from current revenues of Rs 4,500 crore. “I believe organised retailing in India is poised to take off to the next orbit of growth and that your company is well equipped to be a national leader in this space,” he added.

“It was business as usual. There were unnecessary expectations from the event as the chairman cannot discuss specific projects at an AGM. What was impressive was the intent to redeploy money that the company will make and the focus on new and existing verticals,” said Angel Broking’s oil and gas analyst Deepak Pareek.