'Jio' was the biggest risk I took: Mukesh Ambani on investing in telecom sector

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], June 25 : Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said investments in building the telecom major Jio were the "biggest risk" he took, despite skepticism from analysts who doubted India's readiness for the necessary digital infrastructure.

In an interview with McKinsey & Company, Ambani said that some thought India was unprepared for the most advanced digital technology. Still, the decision was made with Reliance Industries' philanthropic philosophy kept in mind.

He said that even in the worst-case scenario, even if the investments don't deliver the expected returns, it would still be Reliance's greatest act of philanthropycontributing to India's digital transformation.

"We've always taken big risks because, for us, scale is important. The biggest risk we have taken so far was Jio. At the time, it was our own money that we were investing, and I was the majority shareholder," Ambani said.

"Our worst-case scenario was that it might not work out financially because some analysts thought India wasn't ready for the most advanced digital technology," he added.

I told my board, Ambani said, "In the worst case, we will not earn much return. That's okay because it's our own money. But then, as Reliance, this will be the best philanthropy that we will have ever done in India because we will have digitised India and thereby completely transformed India."

Ambani also discussed Reliance Industries' future, adding that it will be a deep-tech and advanced manufacturing company.

"The change now for Reliance is that we are going to be a deep-tech and advanced manufacturing company. We started with telecom. In 2021, we launched 5G. We built everything ourselves, end to endthe core, the hardware, the software, every single piece. We used Ericsson and Nokia to help us on 20 per cent, just to make sure that the 80 per cent that we put in was good. I also wanted to make sure that our people were not too full of themselves," Ambani added.

The chairman of Reliance Industries further added that the company's big purpose is to solve society's complex problems and create wealth for the nation and the people.

Within the AI field, we have created our purpose by saying, "Our big purpose is to solve the complex problems before society and create wealth for the nation and the people. For this, we need not go into the high-risk GPU game. Let's do everything downstream." This has a compelling appeal to many bright minds. As a result, we are attracting the best people," Ambani said during the interview.

The Chairman of Reliance Industries also spoke about the vision of his father, Dhirubhai Ambani, which is driving the conglomerate.

"My father used to say that if you want to start a business to be a billionaire, you are an idiot; you will never get there. Suppose you want to start a business to impact a billion people. In that case, you have a good chance of success, and, as a by-product, you can make a reasonable amount of money," he added, sharing the vision of Dhirubhai Ambani for the future of Reliance Group's businesses.

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