Reliance Industries Limited
The Reliance Group is India’s largest business house with total revenues being more than $22.6 billion. This is equal to 3.5% of India’s GDP. Reliance contributes to 10% of India’s total indirect tax and 6% of her total exports. Reliance network of exports spread out to more than one hundred countries across the globe. It is involved in oil exploration and production, gas refining and marketing, petrochemicals, textiles, financial services, insurance, power, telecommunications and infocom initiatives.
The names of Reliance and Dhirubhai Ambani go hand in hand. He was born on 28th December 1932, in Chorwad, Gujarat. Dhirubhai built India’s largest private sector empire, Reliance, and created an equity cult. Dhirubhai started off by selling fried snacks to pilgrims in Mount Girnar during weekends. After school he became a dispatch clerk at A.Besse & Company. The latter became distributors of Shell and Dhirubhai was sent to manage an oil filling station at Aden. In 1958 he returned to India with INR 50,000/- in his pocket. With this he set up a textile trading company. This was the first chapter of the story of Reliance. Aptly helped by his wife and two sons Dhirubhai diversified his interests to petrochemicals, telecommunications and information, technology, energy, power, finance, capital markets and logistics. In 1966 the first textile mill was set up at Naroda using polyester fibre. He branded his products Vimal and thanks to intensive marketing, Vimal became a household name. Financial retail outlets were set up where only Vimal brands were sold. In 1975 a visiting World Bank team certified it to be excellent even by the standards of the developed world. Keeping its core in petrochemicals Reliance soon diversified its activities to telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services,