RIL outlines Bengal vision

Calcutta: Reliance Industries has earmarked Rs 5,000-crore investment for Bengal in the coming years to expand its retail and petroleum outlets.

Speaking at the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit here on Tuesday, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani outlined an eight-point business expansion agenda for the state across telecom and education as well as fresh investment in other businesses such as retail and petroleum.

"We are committing to invest over Rs 5,000 crore in our non-Jio businesses which is across our ecosystem of retail, petroleum outlets," said Ambani. The investment would be spread over the next few years.

On Jio's expansion, Ambani said, "Our current Jio network covers 1,000 towns and nearly 39,000 villages in the state. I am happy to announce that Jio will reach 100 per cent of Bengal's population before the end of 2018."

Reliance will also embark on connecting Bengal with an optic fibre network to offer digital services straight to the subscriber's home and institutions. "Jio will connect every single educational institution and every single hospital in Bengal within the next two years," he said.

Ambani said two years ago at this same event Reliance had announced investment of Rs 4,500 crore but ended up investing Rs 15,000 crore, almost triple the initial sum .

On the infrastructure side, Reliance plans to set up digital service centres and a manufacturing facility in the state. "With the support of the state government we would launch digital service centers in five districts of Bengal with immediate effect. It will give birth to digital entrepreneurs in villages and small towns, kickstart e-commerce and support agriculture as well as small and medium enterprises... create employment and wealth generating opportunities in both rural and urban Bengal," he said.

"We shall be working with multiple partners to explore setting up next generation state of the art electronics manufacturing facilities and make Bengal the hub for innovation and hi-tech technologies for consumer devices such as mobile phones, set-top boxes and other devices."

He also said Jio will work on empowering small retailers with digital tools. "Our state of the art cloud-based POS (point of sale) solution will enable digital billing and payments, loyalty, GST compliance and supplier management," he said. Jio would be creating the set of digital tools and roll them out for small retail in the next two years.

On the education side, Ambani said Jio will set up a chair in honour of Satyendra Nath Bose. The Bose-Einstein collaboration is one of the cornerstones of quantum physics.

"Bengal has always been the cradle of super-intelligent people. The state has produced world renowned scientists like Dr Satyendra Nath Bose, whose 125th birth anniversary celebrations have begun this year. I announce with great pride that Jio will set up a chair in honour of Dr Bose in a prestigious university in Bengal," he said.

Ambani also praised the state's efforts towards ease of doing business and highlighted industrial peace and pace . "Bengal has adopted a positive mind-set that can make the impossible possible. Bengal knows that it must prosper. not just for its own sake, but the whole of India," he said.