Startups on Wednesday found a special mention in Mukesh Ambani’s speech at Reliance Industries 43rd annual general meeting. Ambani did not just acknowledge the contribution from its multiple startups, which were acquired or funded by Reliance in the past few years, to help build technology capabilities along with Jio Platforms but also invited more startups to partner for the future growth of its businesses. “Jio Platforms along with its over 20 startup partners who are now part of our family has built significant world-class capabilities in several cutting edge technologies,” said Ambani.
The multi-billionaire, who recently became the sixth richest person globally ahead of Tesla’s Elon Musk and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page as per Bloomberg Billionaire Index, also listed out these technologies — 4G and 5G, cloud computing, devices and operating system, big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, virtual and mixed reality, blockchain distributed ledger, natural language understanding, computer vision. He added that these technologies can create compelling solutions that span multiple industry verticals and ecosystems like media, financial services, retail and new commerce, education, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities, smart manufacturing and smart mobility.
“These are technology and ecosystems solutions that hold the power to achieve 360-degree digital transformation of India. Our startup partners have contributed significantly to our strengths across many of these areas and we are inviting even more startup to join forces with us.”
Reliance’s chief also pitched Jio to be the best partner for startups across multiple areas of business development and also to realise their full potential. “Whether it be in technology development, product development, distribution market access or even scale-up capital. We are ready to integrate them into our road map and help them achieve full potential,” said Ambani.
The company has already backed or acquired startups including Netradyne that focuses on the driver and commercial vehicle safety, last-mile logistics company Grab A GrubAlso, C-Square Info Solutions that provides software for managing logistics of distribution and retail operations, language localisation technology platform Reverie Language Technologies, AI-backed B2B chatbot maker Haptik, e-commerce company Fynd and more.
“We believe that this would be the true measure of success for Jio to create a mighty knowledge coalition that solves India problems and opens the door for many more companies from India to step successfully onto the global stage,” Ambani said.
Meanwhile, Ambani announced another investor adding to its Jio Platforms cap table. Reliance and Google on Wednesday signed binding agreements for Rs 33,737 crore investment by Google into Jio Platforms. This valued Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.36 lakh crore and would give Google a stake of 7.73 per cent in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis. With this, Jio Platforms total fundraising so far stood at Rs 1,52,056 crore.
