'2G mukt, 5G yukt India': Mukesh Ambani announces JioPhone Next

Reliance India Limited Chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani on Thursday announced Google-Jio Smartphone in partnership with Google — an affordable smartphone built for India.

The smartphone will be available in India in September, Mukesh Ambani announced. Announcing the new smartphone, Mukesh Ambani said, Jio has democratised digital connection in India being the most affordable 4G, but still, 300 million users are still using 2G. The new smartphone will make 'Bharat' '2G Mukt'.

"It is a fully featured smartphone, supporting the entire suite of applications from both Google and Jio, as well as the Android Play Store through which users will have access to the entire universe of Android Apps. It is powered by an extremely optimised version of the Android Operating System, that has been jointly developed by JIO and Google, especially for the Indian market. While being ultra-affordable, JioPhone Next is packed with cutting-edge features like the voice assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, language translation, smart camera with augmented reality filters and much more," Mukesh Ambani announced.

Taking the Jio-Google collaboration to the next level, Jio will now use Google cloud, Mukesh Ambani and Google's Sudar Pichai jointly announced at RIL's Annual General Meeting on Thursday.

In other significant announcements, Mukesh Ambani said the performance of the group exceeded the expectation despite the pandemic, but what matters more is the humanitarian service the group rendered.

"Our business and financial success since last AGM have exceeded expectations. But what has given me far greater happiness than our business performance is RIL's humanitarian efforts during these exceedingly difficult times. Throughout the Covid crisis, our Reliance Family has risen to the occasion with a sense of purpose and national duty. I am sure our efforts of the last year would have made our founding chairman, Dhirubhai Ambani, proud. The spirit of care and empathy is the common thread across everything we do at Reliance. We care for our employees, their families; our customers, shareholders, and partners; the country and community; the planet and the people," Mukesh Ambani said in his introductory speech.

After Mukesh Ambani's address, Isha and Akash Ambani addressed the AGM and asserted the company's mantra of placing the country first, the community next and family third and self last.

Following Isha and Akash Ambani's address, Nita Ambani talked about the five Covid-specific missions — Mission Oxygen, Mission Covid Infra, Mission Anna Seva, Mission Employee Care, and Mission Vaccine Suraksha — the company took up in the past year.

"Traditionally, we have never produced medical grade liquid oxygen. Yet when the need arose, we repurposed our Jamnagar refinery within days to produce high-purity medical grade liquid oxygen," Nita Ambani said adding that it would normally take over a year to set up a new medical-grade oxygen plant that produces 1,100 metric tonnes of oxygen per day.

Here are the major announcements made in the AGM 2021

> Jiophone next to be launched in India on September 30, on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi, Mukesh Ambani announced

> The consolidated revenue of the group was Rs540,000 crore, consolidated EBITDA was Rs98,000 cr, and almost 50% of EBITDA was contributed by consumer businesses.

> Reliance Jio had a net addition of 37.9 million subscribers during the year.

> Aramco-Reliance partnership: This was one of the much-awaited development as the partnership believed to have stumbled a roadblock. Mukesh Ambani talked about it as he welcomes Aramco's Yasir Al-Rumayyan as an independent director on the RIL board.

"I expect our partnership to be formalised in an expeditious manner during this year. In our E&P business, bp and Reliance commenced production in the KGD6 basin. Our JV brought two of our three toughest deepwater gas projects to production. This has been accomplished in record time and set a new global benchmark for capital costs. We are now on course to bring the third Deepwater MJ field onstream in the last quarter of 2022. Together we will produce 30 MMSCMD gas production by 2023. This will establish Reliance again as one of the largest domestic producers of gas in India, meeting 20% of India's gas demand. E&P will again be a source of significant value and sustained earnings growth over the next decade," Mukesh Ambani said.

> Jio institute will start functioning this year at the Navi Mumbai campus, Nita Ambani announced

> Reliance will pay the salaries of its staff who succumbed to Covid to the family members for five years. The company will also finance the education of the children of the deceased staff in India. Also, the company will provide an amount of Rs10 lakh to the family of deceased staff, Nita Ambani said explaining RIL's Mission Employee Care.