Saturday, January 21, 2006

Reliance


Well, if 2005 was year in which reliance was in the news for all the wrong reasons, 2006 is gonna be vastly different. Both brothers seem to have started to focus on their own businesses.

Anil Ambani it seems is poised to become an entertainment Czar. Adlabs, (51% ADAE owned) which he had acquired from Manmohan Shetty has bagged 26 licenses for FM radio for a whopping 112 crores. Adlabs already owns five multiplexes across the country, and is looking at 140 screens by 2008.

Adlabs Films is looking at investing Rs 50-60 crore every year and has already tied up with Ram Gopal Varma, Prakash Jha, Ramesh Sippy and Vipul Shah. Once Adlabs has a large network of theatres, it will be possible for the group to digitally transmit a movie from one centralised location to all the theatres through Reliance Infocomm's existing fibre optic network.

Reliance Entertainment is also working on it's direct-to-home venture which is being called Reliance Bluemagic for which it is aquiring a total of six transponders on INSAT 4B this year, and also might bid for sporting event rights including cricket.

Apart from that, Reliance Infocomm has also chalked out an agreement with Microsoft to look at IPTV. The company is all set to enter consumer homes with broadband Internet through its fibre optic backbone.


Mukesh Ambani recently successfully bidded for seven acres at the Bandra-Kurla complex in Mumbai for (hold your breath!) 1104 crores. Beating brother Anil in the race, it was the biggest land deal in India. This is reportedly for his next venture 'Reatail'.

His team includding Anand Jain and the Meswani brothers is readying to launch a chain of hypermarkets soon across the country. They are looking at 2500 outlets starting from September 2006 with an investment of 20,000 crores, and will employ around 250,00 people. Their counters will start in cities like Aurangabad, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Banglore, Delhi, Ludhiana, Chandigarh.

With Such a scale it will make other players like Biyani's Pantaloon, Shoppers Stop, and even Waal Mart (if FDI in retail is allowed) look small.

Well trust Reliance to do their business on a grand scale!

3 comments:

Amit said...

Reliance reason for success has been that it concentrated on its core buisness.i.e Petrochemical and strengthen it. But with its diversifying its buisness we have to wait and watch if it will be a success formula.

Perestroika said...

reliance has been largely sucessfull because they operate on a very large scale.

The retail business has a great future in india because of growing disposable incomes. Global Players like wall maart and JC PEnny are dying to get into india. So i think their retail business will be a success.

Anirudh said...

there is absoluitely no doubt about the success of reliance in the entertainment business in India, coz thats a booming market and no amount of good multiplex screens seems to suffice.