ANIL AMBANI says the growth opportunities that lie before the company are endless

Last year, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of India's biggest private sector company, Reliance Industries, had a point to prove. By investing Rs 10,500 crore at one go in Reliance Infocomm, the group's telecom venture, Ambani proved again that Reliance can pull off big projects - not just in petrochemicals, but also in any other field it lays its hands on.

In just one year after its launch, Reliance Infocomm had garnered 7 million subscribers for its mobile telephone services. Its services are now available in more cities and towns than any competitor, barring the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam, which has been in the business for more than four decades.

It is this ability to successfully pull off big bets over and over again that continues to earn Reliance its respect.

But this success did not come easily. In its first customer-facing business, Reliance raked in revenues of Rs 2,707 crore in the first full year of operation, but Reliance Infocomm still ended the first year with a net loss of Rs 390 crore on account of bad debts.

But that setback did not prevent Reliance Industries from reporting profits of over $1 billion, the first private sector company in India to do so. This ranks Reliance among the top 150 companies in the world on the basis of net profits, no mean achievement for a company which began its business just a little over 25 years ago. Says Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani: "For our shareholders, the year 2003-04 was a momentous year in wealth creation in the history of Reliance."

What will be Reliance's next big quest? Though the company did not announce any big plans, except for expanding some of its petrochemical capacities by a few million tonnes, the first clues of a new, broad strategy became evident last year.

Reliance will now focus on its energy business in a big way. It will invest more in oil exploration, gas fields and building retail outlets for its petroleum products. The reasons are simple. First, Ambani feels that energy is a big business to be in. It is no coincidence that three of the top five in the Fortune 500 list are energy companies.

Second, India's primary energy consumption of 315 million tonnes of oil equivalent has the potential to increase eight times to 2,400 million tonnes of oil equivalent over the next 20 years.

Says Mukesh Ambani: "Oil and gas represents a fountainhead for the future of Reliance to emerge as a global energy major. For mainstream Reliance, this is a major growth area over next several years."

For that, first on the cards is achieving 30 per cent energy security for its Jamnagar refinery in the next 10 years, and up to 50 per cent by the year 2020. This will be achieved through acquisition of small- and medium-sized oil companies and participation in exploration and development projects. Geographically, the company will focus on Africa, the Middle East, Australia and Latin America.

Already, in India, Reliance holds the largest exploration acreage among private sector companies, covering about 300,000 sq. km. So, in the next few years, Reliance will continue to allocate significant proportions of its cash flow to the core energy value chain business and it will grow its other business domains like power, telecom and financial services, based on the prospects.

And there are big strategic shifts in the offing. Till now, Reliance has invested only in India, as its late founder Dhirubhai Ambani believed "what is good for India is good for Reliance". For the first time, Reliance made two big investments overseas. Early last year, it acquired Trevira GmbH, an erstwhile division of the German giant Hoechst AG, a leading polyester producer and a well-known brand in Europe. Reliance will now have polyester plants in Germany, Belgium and Denmark, and will increase its polyester manufacturing capacity to 1.8 million tonnes per year.
That will make Reliance the largest polyester fibre and yarn manufacturer in the world.

Then, it acquired Flag Telecom to augment its telecom business. Flag has a 55,000-kilometre sub-sea optic fibre cable that connects 16 of the world's top 20 business centres and reaches 75 per cent of the world population. This will also enable Reliance Infocomm to reach out to global markets.

In his speech at the annual general meeting, Mukesh Ambani commented that the future of Reliance will see new paradigms in its passage to global leadership.