by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Commodities, Commodities News, Commodity Market, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Economy, Investing, Large Enterprise, Markets, Medium Enterprise, News
Mukesh Ambani
Mumbai : Noting that Reliance Industries (RIL) has successfully commissioned both the world’s largest paraxylene and off-gas cracker facilities at its refinery in Jamnagar in Gujarat, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday that the company is looking at delivering natural gas from its KG Basin offshore project by 2020.
Addressing RIL’s 41st Annual General Meeting here, Ambani said the company’s hydrocarbon business has further scaled up its capacities during the period in consideration “to become more profitable, integrated and predictable in its earnings profile”.
“We are now nearing the end of our largest-ever investment at Jamnagar and have successfully commissioned and stabilized the world’s largest paraxylene complex.
“Reliance is the second largest paraxylene (PX) producer in the world and Jamnagar has the distinction of being the largest manufacturing facility of PX in the world with 4.2 million tonne (MT) capacity,” he said.
“We also commissioned the largest off-gas cracker complex in the world. Using our refinery off-gasses as feedstock, this cracker is the most cost competitive ethylene cracker, globally.”
During 2017-18, RIL’s refining and petrochemical businesses posted record levels of profitability on the back of expanded capacities, high operating rates, improved cost competitiveness and better margins, the company reported in June.
Its refining and marketing segment posted a 3.2 per cent increase in operating profit which climbed to its highest ever level of Rs 25,869 crore (around $4 billion).
“Both the paraxylene and cracker complexes are already running substantially higher than their design capacity,” he said.
“The butyl rubber project will be commissioned later in 2018. We are also adding new high value materials like composites and carbon fibre to our portfolio,” he added.
On the exploration business, the Chairman drew attention to RIL’s joint investment plan with British energy major BP to monetise over three trillion cubic feet of gas from new fields in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin D6 block on the eastern offshore.
“We will deploy many advanced technologies to start gas production in 2020 and reaching full production of 30-35 million standard cubic meters per day (MSCMD) by 2022,” he said.
“Our gas marketing JV (joint venture) with BP is looking for opportunities to source and distribute gas to Indian consumers including in cities,” he added.
Ambani said that RIL’s coal bed methane (CBM) gas production crossed 1 MSCMD level last year.
“We have started the second phase of CBM development to more than double the current production,” he said.
The company is proposing a cross-border merger of Reliance Holdings USA (RHUSA) with RIL to integrate the US gas resources with the Indian market, he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz
New Delhi : Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh D. Ambani, who keeps his standing as the richest Indian, has kept his annual compensation unchanged at Rs 15 crore for the 10th consecutive year.
According to the company’s annual report released on Thursday, Ambani’s decision reflects “his desire to continue to set a personal example for moderation in managerial compensation levels”.
“Compensation of Shri Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, has been set at Rs 15 crore, reflecting his desire to continue to set a personal example for moderation in managerial compensation levels,” the report said.
This is the tenth consecutive year since Ambani’s compensation package has been set at Rs 15 crore.
Ambani’s compensation includes salary and allowances, perquisites, retiral benefits, and commission payable.
As per Forbes annual list released in March 2018, Ambani, who keeps his standing as the richest Indian, became richer by $16.9 billion in 2018 with assets of $40.1 billion.
He moved up to the 19th global rank on the list of 2,208 billionaires worldwide. In 2017, he ranked 33rd with $23.2 billion.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurship, Markets, News, Politics, Technology
New Delhi : Taking a cue from industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s oft-repeated statement that ‘data is the new oil’, the Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ravi Shankar Prasad urged entrepreneures to help India become a big centre for data analysis.
“How can you help India become a big centre of data analysis? …as someone said, data is the new oil,” Prasad said, speaking at an event to recognise start-up ventures jointly organised by MeitY, Assocham and Ericsson.
The minister said the government needed data for policy making but the data procured should be anonymous.
Giving an analogy, the minister said: “Suppose in a particular area a large number of children get affected (by some diseases) and the government wants to have a policy (to help them). I seek your (start-ups) support. You must have the data, why this particular ailment is happening in this part of the country — geographical, social, economic (data).”
“But data must be anonymous, so that victims (people) are not known.”
Prasad further said: “My take on data privacy is very simple. There has to be a balance between data availability, data utility, data innovation, data anonymity and data privacy.”
Saying that “we generate a lot of data”, the minister added that it should be properly safeguarded.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneur, Success Stories
Mumbai : Three Indians, including Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani and human rights lawyer Indira Jaising, feature in Fortune magazine as the 50 Greatest Leaders of 2018, released on Thursday.
Architect Balkrishna Doshi is the third Indian in the list of the American magazine “of the thinkers, speakers, and doers who are stepping up to meet today’s challenges” and includes Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Ranking Ambani, who turned 61 on Thursday, at 24th place, Fortune said that he had “in less than two years, brought mobile data to the masses and completely upended the country’s telecom market”.
“Since Ambani, chief of the $47 billion conglomerate Reliance Industries, launched Jio — the first mobile network in the world to be entirely IP-based — in September 2016, the company has signed up a staggering 168 million subscribers.
“The secret? Offering dirt-cheap data and free calls (and plowing billions of dollars into the infrastructure that transmits them). The effect, dubbed ‘Jio-fication’, has driven India’s higher-price carriers to drop costs (if not run them out of business), and it fueled a 1,100 per cent rise in India’s monthly data consumption,” it said.
Lawyers Collective Founder Indira Jaising has been ranked 20.
“When the poorest in India need a voice, they find one in Jaising, a lawyer who has dedicated her life to battling injustice,” Fortune said.
“She has fought on behalf of victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, helped Syrian Christian women in India win property rights equal to their male counterparts’, and helped draft India’s first domestic violence law.
“Her work has recently led her to Myanmar, where she was appointed by the UN to lead an investigation into the persecution of Rohingya Muslims,” it added.
Ranking Doshi at 43, Fortune said he is the winner of architecture’s highest honour this year – the Pritzker Prize – and has spent the bulk of his 70-year career championing accessible housing, earning the nickname of “the architect for the poor”.
“His designs include the Aranya low-cost housing project in Indore, a labyrinth of homes and courtyards that provide around 80,000 residents with a balance of open spaces and communal living, and the mixed-income Life Insurance Corporation Housing in Ahmedabad, where several generations of a family can occupy levels of the same building.
“Underlying all his work is the ideal that all economic classes deserve good housing,” it said.
The first rank in this year’s list goes to “The Students” of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and other schools in the US that suffered from gun violence.
This year’s list includes Bill and Melinda Gates, tennis star Serena Williams, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Tencent CEO Huateng ‘Pony’ Ma, Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and Hollywood actor-producer Reese Witherspoon.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Entrepreneurship, Success Stories
By Arul Louis,
New York : India has 121 billionaires — 19 more than last year — making them the third largest group of the ultra-rich after those from the US and China, according to Forbes, the business magazine that produces an annual list.
Mukesh Ambani, the energy and petrochemicals magnate, who keeps his standing as the richest Indian, is richer by $16.9 billion in 2018 with assets of $40.1 billion, according to the magazine’s list released online on Tuesday.
He moved up to the 19th global rank on the list of 2,208 billionaires worldwide compiled by Forbes. In 2017, he ranked 33rd with $23.2 billion.
The US has 585 billionaires and China 373 this year on the Forbes tally, which it calls “The Three Comma Club” for the punctuation used in writing out fully the billion in numbers.
In 2017, there were 102 Indians on the list.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man with assets valued at $112 billion, overtaking Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates whose fortunes are valued at $90 billion and investor Warren Buffet with $84 billion.
In 2017, Gates ranked first globally with $86 billion, Buffet second with $75.6 billion and Bezos third with $72.8 billion.
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post newspaper, is the first person to cross the $100 billion mark in assets, Forbes said. His fortunes rose by $39.2 billion over the past year, which Forbes said is the list’s biggest one-year jump ever.
Gates, who heads the world’s biggest philanthropic organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated a lot of his assets to charities.
The software entrepreneur Azim Premji moves to the second richest Indian spot in 2018, passing Lakshmi Mittal, the international steel tycoon, according to the magazine.
Premji moved up from the 72nd global spot in 2017 with $14.9 billion, to the 58th rank with $18.8 billion this year.
Although the value of his assets have increased over the past year, Lakshmi Mittal slid to the 62nd rank on the 2018 global list and to the third spot among Indians with $18.5 billion from the 56th worldwide rank with $16.4 billion in 2017.
The richest Indian woman on the Forbes list is Savitri Jindal of the Jindal steel and power conglomerate, who ranks 176th globally on the Forbes list with $8.8 billion.
Next is the biotech entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw at 629 with $3.6 billion.
The 39-year-old financial technology entrepreneur Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who ranks 1,394th globally with $1.7 billion, is the youngest Indian on the Forbes list.
Software company HCL’s founder Shiv Nadar is the fourth richest Indian on the list with $14.6 billion and is ranked 98 globally.
Sun Pharmaceuticals founder Dilip Shanghvi ranks next as the fifth riches Indian with $12.8 billion at the 115th global spot.
The Indian pharmaceutical sector has the most number of billionaires – 16.
It is followed by consumer goods with 15 billionaires, real estate with nine, and software services and diversified investments with eight each.
Nirav Modi, the jeweller who has reportedly been linked to an alleged $2 billion-fraud involving the Punjab National Bank, was not on last year’s or this year’s global list of billionaires, but a separate list of only Indian billionaires published by Forbes in October ranked him 85th with assets worth $1.8 billion.
Many people of the Indian diaspora also figure on the Forbes list. Construction magnate Pallonji Mistry, who is listed as Irish, is ranked 66th with $17.8 billion.
There are nine others of Indian origin with assets over $2 billion from Australia, Britain, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the US.
The top Indian billionaires
Here is a list of the richest Indians on the Forbes list with assets over $8 billion. (Their global rank is shown before their names and the sector and value of assets as listed by Forbes follow their names.)
19 Mukesh Ambani ($40.1 billion, petrochemicals, oil & gas)
58 Azim Premji ($18.8 billion , software services)
62 Lakshmi Mittal ($18.5 billion, steel)
98 Shiv Nadar ($14.6 billion, software services)
115 Dilip Shanghvi ($12.8 billion, pharmaceuticals)
127 Kumar Birla ($11.8 billion, commodities)
143 Uday Kotak ($10.7 billion, banking)
151 Radhakishan Damani ($10 billion, investments, retail)
154 Gautam Adani ($9.7 billion, commodities, ports)
170 Cyrus Poonawalla ($9.1 billion, vaccines)
176 Savitri Jindal ($8.8 billion, steel)
176 Sunil Mittal ($8.8 billion, telecom)
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
