Mukesh Ambani Wants Reliance To Emerge as AI Enabler in India, Be Among World's Top 10 Conglomerates

Mukesh Ambani urged Reliance Industries' employees to accelerate AI transformation across all businesses in 2024 and solve “India’s urgent national priorities”.

Reliance Industries is in the midst of transforming into a digital conglomerate by pushing into digital commerce under Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani. (Hindustan Times)

Reliance Industries Chairman and MD, Mukesh Ambani has urged the employees of his company to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) transformation across all businesses in 2024 to stay ahead of rivals in deploying advanced technologies. In this year-end address to Reliance employees on Thursday, at an event marking the 91st birth anniversary of the company's late founder Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh outlined his ambitions.

“We need to be at forefront of using data, with AI as an enabler for achieving a quantum jump in productivity and efficiency,” Ambani said. This will help the company to be at the forefront of solving “India's urgent national priorities in education, healthcare, agriculture and employment generation,” Ambani said.

"Reliance can and Reliance will grow to be among the top 10 business conglomerates of the world," Ambani said, indicating his ambitions for the company and where he wanted to see it.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. is working with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay to launch ‘BharatGPT,' a large language model that would be tailored to the needs of Indian users, Akash Ambani, the tycoon's elder son said at an event this week. Akash, who's helming the group's telecom and digital ventures, also said Reliance plans to integrate AI across businesses.

Reliance is in the midst of transforming into a digital conglomerate by pushing into digital commerce. It now sells everything from electronics to apparel through its online and offline stores.

Mukesh urged employees to bring AI-led transformation across the company's key growth engines including digital services, retail, oil and chemical business as well as health and life science by 2024.

The sector is also luring Asia's second-richest person, Gautam Adani, whose flagship on Thursday announced a joint venture with UAE's International Holding Co. to explore AI, Internet of Things and blockchain technology for industrial applications. The Adani Group is increasingly looking to diversify into digital services, much like Reliance.

Reliance, which was started by Mukesh's father Dhirubhai Ambani in 1957, now operates in telecoms, digital services, retail, oil and gas and new energy with a market value of more than $200 billion.

To supports its AI ambitions, in September Reliance signed a deal with U.S. chip firm Nvidia to develop cloud infrastructure and language models, as well as generative applications, Reuters reported.

(With inputs from Bloomberg, Reuters and PTI)