We reinvest our business every 3-5 yrs; aim to become a deep-tech co: Mukesh Ambani
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Billionaire Mukesh Ambani says his oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance reinvests business every 3-5 years and is aiming to become a deep-tech and advanced manufacturing company.In an interview to McKinsey and Company's Leading Asia series, the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd shared his vision of the future of the company.His playbook includes reinventing before being forced to, betting big on the future and staying anchored in long-term impact.At Reliance, reinvention has meant building the world's largest refinery, launching 4G connectivity across India, and investing $25 billion to digitise India through Jio. It is now building one of the world's largest manufacturing ecosystems for green and clean energy, covering solar, batteries, hydrogen, and bio-energy.Ambani said the technology landscape is changing at an exponential speed and the key challenge for the next generation will be succeeding in this new order."Businesses of the future will have to be good at harnessing technologies of the future. So, our North Star has always been that our vision and purpose of doing business have to be impact-led," he said. "That's in the DNA of Reliance. We will figure out where to get to, what we want to do - as long as we have the right talent and we have the right goal."The goal, even at the beginning of Reliance's journey over four decades ago, was to contribute to making India a prosperous nation and enabling all Indians to live a better life. "Between my father and I, as owner-leaders, we believed in this goal and we built a team that also believed in it and executed it with equal zeal."That focus on the North Star, on achieving continuous growth through excellence, and creating large-scale societal impact remains unchanged in Reliance."What changes is our business strategy. Even today, we reinvent our business every three, four, or five years in terms of what we do," he said.Ambani said the ambition for deep-tech began with the telecom foray, when Jio launched 5G in 2021, building every aspect of the service within the company. "We built everything ourselves, end to end-the core, the hardware, the software, every single piece. We used Ericsson and Nokia to help us on 20 per cent, just to make sure that the 80 per cent that we put in was good," he said.The desire to develop technology stemmed from the era when the landscape was subjected to a lot of licenses for the technology. "When we grew up, we were the users of technology, and it was clear that we had to license technology from abroad to ensure high quality. But we were subjugated to so many licenses. It was also high risk because, at the end of the day, if a plan didn't work, you could lose your shirt," he said.He encouraged his leadership to be 'owners of technology' to become innovators."The change now for Reliance is that we are going to be a deep-tech and advanced manufacturing company," he said.Reliance has set its purpose in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) game by choosing to develop things that are 'downstream' and avoid the high-risk GPU game, he said. "Our big purpose is to solve the complex problems before society and create wealth for the nation and the people. For this, we need not go into the high-risk GPU game. Let's do everything downstream."Asked about what is the guiding light or 'North Star' for Reliance, Ambani said, "I am very loyal to my father's vision... Our North Star has always been that our vision and purpose of doing business have to be impact-led. My father used to say that if you want to start a business to be a billionaire, you are an idiot; you will never get there. If you want to start a business to impact a billion people, then you have a good chance of success, and, as a byproduct, you can make a reasonable amount of money."He also further shared his aim for longevity of Reliance and leaving behind a legacy through the company. "We are believers that, at the end of the day, you come without anything into this world, and you leave without taking anything with you. What you leave behind is an institution."Recalling his father's words, he said: "Reliance is a process. It's an institution that should last. You have to make sure that Reliance lasts beyond you and me.""That's my commitment to him - that Reliance will last beyond us. In 2027, Reliance will celebrate its golden jubilee. But I want Reliance to continue to serve India and humanity even after completing 100 years. And I am confident it will," he said.On how he gets the 'right people' for his company and vision, Ambani said that the focus is on three Cs - character, competence and culture.Character is more important than competence because competence can be built.
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Indian Express
21 minutes ago
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ExplainSpeaking: The truth about poverty in India
Dear Readers, Over the past few months, there's been a flurry of news about India's poverty rate, or the ratio of people who are considered officially poor. First, on April 25, the Government of India came out with a press release titled 'India's Triumph in Combating Poverty', where it used the World Bank's 'Poverty and Equity Brief' of April 2025 to state that '171 million lifted from extreme poverty in 10 years'. Then, earlier this month, the World Bank came out with an update on the methodology and level of its poverty line and stated that just 5.75% of Indians now live under abject poverty — down from 27% in 2011-12. There are two key takeaways. One, according to new WB estimates, India's poverty levels in the past were actually lower than previously estimated (see TABLE 1). For instance, in 1977-78, India's poverty level was not 64% but 47%. The dialling back of poverty rates continues through the decades. The second key change in the WB update was the adoption of a new poverty line — $3 a day — and according to this new income level, the proportion of Indians living in abject or extreme poverty has fallen from 27% in 2011-12 (around 344.4 million or 34.44 crore Indians) to just under 6% (around 75.22 million or 7.5 crore) in 2022-23. As heartening as this news is, there are several common misconceptions about how to read this data, what it actually means and why many question it. For instance, when you look at the $3-a-day poverty line, do you multiply it by 85 (the current market exchange rate between the US dollar and Indian rupee) to arrive at Rs 255 a day as the income level for ascertaining whether an Indian is poor or not? If you do that, you are mistaken because the $3 poverty line is calculated on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, and the conversion rate to Indian rupee is not 85 but 20.6. Simply put, it is the level of income used as a cut-off point for deciding who is poor in any economy. It is important to note here that the context (both time period and location) is critical to arriving at a meaningful poverty line. For instance, an Indian receiving a salary of Rs 1,000 a month may not have been considered poor in 1975, but today that income (Rs 33 a day) will barely buy anything. Similarly, a monthly salary of Rs 1,00,000 (or Rs 3,333 a day) in today's Patna will be comfortable for a person to live by, but the same salary in Paris or New York may not buy the same lifestyle. Since there is no one level of poverty — what is a comfortable level for one is just okay for another and barely enough for the third — one can create several poverty lines to match the context and analytical use. Governments, especially in developing and poor countries, want to identify the extent of poverty in their countries. This has two uses. One, to help them gauge the extent of poverty and shape welfare policies for the poor. The second use is for governments, policymakers and analysts to understand whether a set of policies has actually worked over time to reduce poverty and improve wellbeing. Historically, India had been a leader in poverty estimation and India's poverty line methodology and data collection influenced the rest of the world in how to study poverty. However, India's last officially recognised poverty line was in 2011-12. It was built on a 2009 formula suggested by a committee led by noted Delhi School economist Suresh Tendulkar. Since then, there has been no update on the method. In 2014, a committee led by former RBI Governor C Rangarajan was commissioned to provide a new method, but this recommendation was never officially accepted. Since then, thanks to gaps and changes in relevant data collection, India has increasingly used either the Niti Aayog multidimensional poverty index (which is fundamentally different in how it measures poverty) or relied on the World Bank's poverty line. As explained, poverty lines make sense only when they can capture the context, like the purchasing power at a particular time and place. That is why for WB's poverty line to make sense, it has to be based on the purchasing power parity calculations. The first-ever poverty line was set at a dollar a day. Here's how it came about: 'In 1990, a group of independent researchers and the World Bank examined national poverty lines from some of the poorest countries in the world and converted those lines into a common currency by using purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates. The PPP exchange rates are constructed to ensure that the same quantity of goods and services are priced equivalently across countries. Once converted into a common currency, they found that in six of these very poor countries around the 1980s the value of the national poverty line was about $1 per day per person (in 1985 prices). This formed the basis for the first dollar-a-day international poverty line,' according to the World Bank. Over time, as prices went up in every country, the WB had to raise its poverty line. In June, they have now raised it to $3 a day. The PPP exchange rate for Indian rupees in 2025 is 20.6. As such, the poverty line delineating abject or extreme poverty for an individual in the US is an income of $3 a day, while for India it is Rs 62 a day. For the UK, the PPP conversion rate is just 0.67, while for China it is 3.45 and for Iran it is a whopping 1,65,350. India's own (domestically formulated) poverty line in 2009, before the Tendulkar recommendation, was Rs 17 a day per person for urban areas and Rs 12 a day per person for rural areas. In 2009, Tendulkar raised the poverty line to Rs 29 per day per person in urban areas and Rs 22 per day per person in rural areas, and later to Rs 36 and Rs 30, respectively, in 2011-12. In 2014, Rangarajan recommended raising the domestic poverty line to Rs 47 per person per day in urban areas and Rs 33 in rural areas. Many economists, such as Himanshu, professor of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and someone who worked with Tendulkar during the formulation of the last official poverty line, have written extensively on the subject. He showed how, in the absence of a robust and updated domestic poverty line and given the gaps and changes in data collection, India's poverty estimates exhibit wide variation, creating both confusion and controversy (see TABLE 2). Poverty in India could be as low as 2% or as high as 82% depending on the choice of poverty line and methodology. The same trend of variation exists in the reduction in poverty rates — they could be steep or fairly gradual. Upshot Bizarre as it may seem, especially for a country with so many people at low levels of income and consumption, as well as a country with an enviable record of studying poverty, India's poverty lies in the eyes of the beholder. How do you know if a person is poor or not? How many are poor? Should one quote 5.75% who live in abject poverty (Rs 62 a day)? Or look at 24%, the poverty line for 'lower middle-income countries' such as India? Should one consider 20% as the rate, the proportion of Indians who voluntarily line up to offer labour instead of a paltry amount? Or 66% who are provided free food by law? TABLE 3 attempts to provide some context on the World Bank's poverty lines and how they compare with India's reality as evidenced by official government surveys and data. Earlier this year, when the Union Budget was unveiled, the government waived off all income tax for those earning an income upto Rs 12 lakhs per annum — that works out to be Rs 3,288 per day. In essence, the government believes that imposing any income tax on such an Indian will be overtaxing them and holding back their consumption and the growth of the broader economy. There are two ways to look at the WB data, although they are not mutually exclusive. One, to celebrate the reduction in the proportion of Indians living in what is defined as abject poverty ($3 or Rs 62). Two, to give ourselves pause to understand the actual state of economic well-being (or the lack of it) of an average Indian when as many as 83% of Indians are living off Rs 171 a day. Remember, these poverty lines are inclusive of all income or expenditures. How much did you spend or earn today? Share your views and queries on Take care, Udit Udit Misra is Deputy Associate Editor. 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New Indian Express
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The Print
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Indians ruled Gulf through Hormuz. They paid to ban public cow slaughter, built temples
The shockwave rippled through the Western Indian Ocean; the decades after saw the end of Hormuz's prominence, the development of Iran's first maritime policy, and the immigration of tens of thousands of Indian traders and investors into the Gulf and Iran. This is the story of how Hormuz shaped the history of India and the world. Since at least 1300 CE, Hormuz has been the hinge of Eurasian trade, where thousands of Indians, Arabs, Iranians, Mongols, and Turks made their fortunes. Goods poured through Hormuz, to and fro the Mediterranean, West and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and China. But in the 16 th century, the Portuguese adventurer Alfonso da Albuquerque took control of the port. Though an uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Iran continues, just two days ago, on 24 June, the Iranian parliament threatened the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But this was not the first time that Hormuz, situated at the narrowest point of the Persian Gulf, has turned into a flashpoint between Iran and the West. Understanding the Gulf Just as the Gulf's geography offered opportunities throughout time, it also created challenges. Its character was utterly unique, nothing like our world of monolithic nation-states. Sam Dalrymple, historian and author of Shattered Lands: The Five Partitions of India, described Gulf towns to me as 'trading islands/oasis towns wedged between the sand sea and the salt sea. They make less sense as states and more as oases filled with traders.' Their population was never consistent: it waxed and waned with the trading seasons, which in turn depended on the monsoon. Outside these ports, weather conditions were extreme: storms, unseasonal winds, scorching heat and humidity. The Gulf's northern edge, shielded from the Iranian Plateau by a mountain range, allowed little room for coastal states to grow. On the south, the vast Arabian desert was home to small tribes that occasionally preyed on sea traffic. Hormuz rose to prominence because it was able to offer safe ground for international trade, without the risk of piracy. This wasn't what one would expect from looking at it. Barely a few kilometres across, sweltering Hormuz was encrusted in salt, with only one freshwater source. Its rulers solved this problem by importing water on barges from the shore. Markets were kept open all night to avoid the daytime heat. In The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities, historian Willem Floor further explains that the rulers of Hormuz imposed an embargo on timber, oars, coir, iron and steel, which prevented their rivals from building ships. They then took control of nearby ports, establishing a chokehold on the Gulf. Also read: What is Strait of Hormuz & why its closure by Iran could disrupt global energy trade The struggle over Hormuz Though Hormuz's rulers were Muslim, the island made no segregations on ethnic or religious lines. The second-largest ethnic group on the island were Indians, who conducted a roaring trade in horses in the 13th century CE. In 'India's Sea Trade with Iran in Medieval Times', historian Shireen Moosvi discusses the Somanatha-Veraval inscription, recording the construction of a mosque in Somnath in 1264 by the Hormuz merchant Nuruddin Firoz. The Sanskrit portion of the inscription describes the mosque as a dharma-sthanam, and mentions the direct involvement of Gujarat's ruling Chaulukya king and his officials in the grant. If this Hormuz merchant had such influence, writes Moosvi, 'Hormuz merchants must surely have formed an elite group of some importance… in the Chaulukya kingdom of Gujarat.' For the next century, Hormuz continued to flourish. According to Moosvi, Hormuz's networks extended as far as Uzbekistan and Turkey. Goods shipped from Hormuz reached, in relays, all the way to China. The Chinese admiral Zheng He brought his vast armada there multiple times in the 15th century, where he exchanged ceramics and silks for the luxuries of Western Eurasia. Strategic resources such as horses were shipped to India from Hormuz; in return, India provided necessities such as rice to the Gulf ports, as well as cloth, metals, woods, and spices. In his edited volume India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800, MN Pearson notes that exchanges overwhelmingly favoured India. Vast quantities of silver and salt were required to balance the trade. In the early 1500s, the Portuguese erupted into the Indian Ocean. From their galleons—artillery platforms designed for deep-sea and coastal voyaging—they attempted to take control of trade gateways in the Indian Ocean, including Hormuz. They stationed a permanent garrison on the island in 1515, but immediately ran into problems. At the same time, the Mughal Empire of the Indian subcontinent consolidated its reach into Afghanistan. Conquering Kandahar, the Mughals stabilised overland routes from India to Central Asia, further weakening the appeal of Hormuz. According to Floor, the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Iraq, attempted to get rid of the Portuguese in 1552 but failed. It would be an Iranian power which finally expelled them and restored some normalcy to the Gulf trade. But Hormuz would never again be independent. Also read: Crude oil prices to freight rates: How Iran's chokehold on Strait of Hormuz impacts India Iranians and banias Up to this point, riven by internal strife, the Safavid dynasty of Iran had paid little attention to events in Hormuz—though they were technically its overlords. However, Shah Abbas I (r. 1587–1629), a contemporary of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, eventually consolidated power. He was alarmed by the loss of both Kandahar and Hormuz, crucial to Iran's trade with the steppe and the ocean. In 'The Gulf in the Seventeenth Century', historian Abdul Aziz M Awad describes how, in 1622, Abbas I used a mixture of threats and promises to convince the English East India Company to attack Hormuz on his behalf. This was successful, and the Portuguese stranglehold was broken. Simultaneously, Abbas recaptured Kandahar from the Mughals, reestablishing Iran as a major economic player. Abbas had learned from the mistakes of earlier Gulf rulers: Allowing foreign control over the Hormuz Island would make it impossible to challenge European sea power in the strait. And so, Abbas routed Gulf trade into a tiny mainland port called Gombroon, renamed Bandar Abbas (Abbas Port). He also encouraged the immigration of Indian merchants throughout Iran, in unprecedented numbers. According to Floor (Persian Gulf), about a third of all homes in Bandar Abbas belonged to Indians. There was a large temple, and Hindu processions were allowed; the Banias also paid the Persian authorities to ban public cow slaughter. Historian Scott Levi, in his paper 'The Indian Merchant Diaspora in Early Modern Central Asia and Iran', writes that 12,000 Indian merchants resided in Isfahan, the capital of Safavid Iran. These merchants traded primarily in cloth and luxury commodities, but used the proceeds for investments and moneylending. As such, they were favoured by Iranian authorities: they 'provided a considerable source of income for the treasury, facilitated taxation by extending a monetised economy into the countryside, and provided village craftsmen and farmers with an important source of investment capital and credit services.' This didn't automatically imply good relations between Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Trade in Hormuz fluctuated as both states competed, occasionally banning trade or rerouting it to other ports. By this point, in the 1600s, both these superpowers had something approaching a modern maritime policy, in which ports like Surat and Hormuz featured front and centre. At the beginning of this column, we saw how Gulf ports, especially Hormuz, had conducted their own business in the 1300s; by the 1600s, they had become chess pieces wielded by gunpowder empires. Yet, some patterns were deeper than the transient politics of states. Indian immigration to the Gulf continued. As the East India Company, and then the British Raj, expanded through the Gulf, their officials noted again and again the ubiquity of Indians. English government official Thomas Herbert, writing in 1627–30, claimed that they 'swarm throughout the Orient… pursuing trade in infinite numbers.' Indians in general, not just Banias, worked as shopkeepers, brokers, bankers, accountants, translators and secretaries. Indian craftsmen and labourers made up a huge proportion of the economy of Oman. Indian soldiers travelled via the Gulf to fight British battles in World War I. And, as Sam Dalrymple writes, it was possible in the early 20th century that Gulf states could have joined an Independent India. Even after the partitioning of the Indian Ocean world into nation-states, Indians continue to work and live in all echelons of Gulf society. The Strait of Hormuz once made Indian fortunes, both before and after the era of powerful states that looked to the sea. What will happen if tensions rise again, and it is closed? 'About 20 per cent of oil and natural gas consumed across the world flows through the Strait of Hormuz… Even if ships heading to India aren't blocked, a major disruption in Hormuz will likely cause energy prices to spike up and make it hard to insure vessels. In a time of economic uncertainty, the last thing India wants is an oil shock,' Aditya Ramanathan, Research Fellow at the Takshashila Institution, told me. The Gulf and the Indian seaboard are not, perhaps, as close as they once were. But they will always be interlocked. Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of 'Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire' and the award-winning 'Lords of the Deccan'. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha. This article is a part of the 'Thinking Medieval' series that takes a deep dive into India's medieval culture, politics, and history. (Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
