Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries and Tata Group have made it to the prestigious TIME's list of 100 World's Most Influential Companies of 2024. TIME called Reliance 'India's Juggernaut'. This is the second time that Reliance has found its way into the TIME list. Jio Platforms, the firm that holds digital properties of the conglomerate, was included in the inaugural TIME 100 Most Influential Companies List of 2021. Serum Institute is the other Indian company on the list.
TIME listed Reliance in the 'Titans' category (one of the five categories under which the companies were divided, other being Leaders, Disrupters, Innovators, and Pioneers). Tata was listed in 'Titan's' category while Serum under 'Pioneers'.
"Reliance Industries was founded as a textile and polyester company 58 years ago by Dhirubhai Ambani. Today the sprawling conglomerate -- which has aligned its growth with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for a 'self-reliant' India -- is the country's most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of more than USD 200 billion," TIME said.
Now led by Dhirubhai's son Mukesh, the Mumbai-based company has ventures in energy, retail, and telecommunications, among others, and has made its chairman Asia's richest man, it said. The publication went on to stated that in February, Reliance came out on top in a fiercely competitive race to dominate India's burgeoning streaming market by striking a USD 8.5 billion merger deal with Disney's India business.
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"The deal will bring together more than 100 television channels and give the combined group around a 31 per cent share of India's streaming market compared to rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime with 8 per cent each," according to analytics firm Comscore.
Reliance has revolutionised several economic sectors in the world's most populous country by making world-class products and services available at affordable prices with multiple innovations. Under Mukesh Ambani, the firm's telecom arm Jio revolutionised India's digital landscape and drove digital inclusion on an unprecedented scale with the most affordable mobile data tariffs in the world. It set up the world's largest single location refining complex.
Reliance Retail is ranked among the top 100 retailers globally and in FY24 it registered 1.06 billion footfalls across its 18,800+ stores (67 per cent of which are in small towns and villages). Reliance is investing USD 10 billion in building the most comprehensive ecosystem for new energy and new materials in India and has set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2035.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from PTI)
