Reliance Jio, Retail now makeup half of RIL’s EBITDA; how Mukesh Ambani’s new cash cows fared in Q2

Mukesh Ambani is on a mission to carve a tech giant out of Reliance Industries Ltd empire. Amid this, RIL’s consumer facing businesses Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail have been gaining prominence. Combined, the digital services arm and the retail business of Mukesh Ambani’s oil-to-telecom behemoth make up for 49% of the company’s total EBITDA. Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail are the two segments of RIL that in recent months have been the most lucrative of the RIL pie, as marquee investors lined up to have a piece of them. Here’s how they fared during the July-September quarter.

Jio Platforms Limited

• On quarter basis, Jio Platforms posted a 19.8% jump in net profit while revenue from operations improved 7.2%.
• Jio has now become the only operator outside China to have reached the milestone of 400 million subscribers in a single country.
• Wireless gross addition showed a strong sequential increase to 27.2 million as lockdown restrictions began to ease during the quarter.
• With more data consumption, average wireless data consumption of 12 GB per user per month was seen.
• Making strides in the 5G connectivity space, Jio Platforms expanded efforts to develop open and interoperable interface compliant architecture based 5G solution with a virtualized RAN.
• Qualcomm Technologies and Jio achieved over a 1 Gbps milestone on the Reliance Jio 5GNR solution with a Tier-I carrier in the US.
• JioUPI has been rolled out across the country now as digital payments gain prominence in India.

Reliance Retail

• The Retail giant that RIL has nurtured saw EBITDA grow 85.9% on-quarter basis to Rs 2,006 crore.
• During the quarter Reliance Retail raised Rs 37,710 crore from eight marquee investors, selling 8.22% stake.
• Reliance Retail has been witnessing a growth in business although lockdowns continue to take a toll on business.
• In the jewellery segment robust growth was seen with diamond share increasing.
• In the luxury and premium brands, digital commerce revenue up 3X over the previous year.
• The strong growth momentum was sustained in Grocery and Connectivity while Consumer Electronics and Fashion & Lifestyle staged a significant recovery.
• Growth was broad based across categories, with laptops and productivity devices more than doubling and High End TVs, Air Care and Appliances delivering strong growth.
• JioMart continued to witness an increase in customer order through the quarter.
• JioMart Kirana partnerships were extended to 20 cities during the period with 4X increase in orders over the first quarter of this fiscal year.