August 2019 – Page 2

India’s richest man to target retail as a balance to energy investments

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and boss of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), is launching an ambitious plan to boost retail revenue as a balance to his energy interests.

RIL will soon hire distributors to sell private-label brands owned by its retail unit through neighbourhood stores – across categories such as staples, food, home and personal care and general merchandise.

RIL sells these products through its retail stores under brand names such as Best Farms, Good Life, Masti Oye, Kaffe, Enzo, Mopz, Expelz and Home One.

Ambani expects the consumer businesses to contribute nearly as much to RIL’s overall earnings as the energy and refining businesses by 2025.

As part of this strategy, RIL is taking on online retailers such as Amazon and Flipkart in the e-commerce segment and the likes of Hindustan Unilever Ltd and ITC Ltd in the offline segment.

Watch this space!

Reliance Retail already operates neighbourhood stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, wholesale, specialty and online stores.

India’s renewable energy reaches new highs

We often look at India from outside and just see pollution – but look closer and you will see major change is taking place.

Solar and wind energy are taking off – “An aggregate of 80.46 GW of renewable energy limit has been introduced in the country as on June 30, 2019 which includes 29.55 GW from Solar and 36.37 GW from Wind control,” according to Power and New and Renewable Energy Minister Mr R K Singh.

The government has set a focus of 175 GW of clean energy capacity by 2022, including 100 GW solar and 60 GW of wind energy.

According to India’s submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), a combined electric power limit of 40 per cent from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources is to be introduced by 2030.

The Ministry also told the House that a sum of 42 solar power parks with a total limit of around 23.40 GW have been approved by the government so far to encourage accomplishment of 100 GW target by March 2022.

Well done India – keep it going.

Modi reforms paying off in record FDI for India

India has just reached record levels of Foreign Direct Investment inflow of US$64.37 billion, evidence that the Modi Government reforms are having an impact on the global reputation of India.

When the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government assumed power in 2014-15, the FDI inflows were US$45.14 billion.

Tata’s big jump in global brand value rankings

For many years the Tata group has been the stand out leader among Indian corporates.

It regularly tops brand valuation charts.

But it has made a big leap forward this year, making the highest gain among the top 25.

In the 2019 study by UK-based Brand Finance of the nation’s leading 100 brands, there was a sharp jump in brand valuation achieved by the “salt-to-software” business house.

The 2019 list shows a 37 per cent jump in brand value for the Tata group, to $19.55 billion for 2019, the highest in the top 25. Last year, the group had achieved a brand value of $14.23 billion, which was a jump of nearly nine per cent.

Well done Tata.