Good evening. Thank you for your patience. Sorry to keep you waiting. Welcome to the presentation on Reliance's financial and operational performance for the third quarter financial year 2021. Mr. Srikanth will start with the consolidated financial performance, and followed by Kiran Thomas and Anshuman Thakur, who will take you through the Jio performance for the quarter. Dinesh Thapar will take on from there to talk about the retail segment, and Sanjay Roy will talk about the E&P segment. Mr. Srikanth will come back and talk about both the O2C segment as well as Samit Arora. Over to you, Srikanth.
Thanks, Srini, and good evening to all of you. A very quick set of slides on the consolidated financial performance. Starting with revenue, INR 138,000 crores, up 7%, and this is primarily led by the O2C segment on the back of higher volumes and realization. EBITDA is higher by 12% at INR 26,100 crores, and this is on the back of strong operating performance by all the segments. If you see the split, about 56% of the incremental EBITDA came from retail and Jio. We also continue to see a sharp fall in finance cost at INR 4,326 crores, which is almost 29% lower. Even if you compare it to what was in Q1, the fall is even more sharper. This is on the back of all the capital flows that came in, and we have used it to run down our liabilities.
The tax rates are low. We talked about it last time, too. This is due to the reduction in the effective tax rate for the year. All this means that our net profit at INR 14,894 crores is up 41% on a quarter-on-quarter basis and 26% on a year-on-year. This number does include exceptional item of INR 121 crores, which is a net impact of impairment of U.S. shale assets of INR 15,691 crores and recognition of corresponding deferred tax assets. There are detailed notes are provided in the releases. To the next slide, please. This is the split of. Slides have changed?
Not for me. Yeah, now it's changed.
This is the split of EBITDA by business, and you can see O2C up 10% and consumer business is up 16%, Retail sharp improvement, and digital services at about INR 8,942, which is 7.2% higher. Clearly on O2C side, we have seen demand revival and also the downstream product deltas have been very strong and this, in some sense, helped to negate the weakness in the fuel market. On the consumer side, Jio earnings EBITDA continues to grow on the back of subscriber addition as well as higher ARPU. Retail benefited from a sharp rebound in fashion and lifestyle, and also the investment income on the capital raise that happened. Overall, consumer businesses now account for 51% of the EBITDA. It was 37% a year ago. Next slide, please. Just one slide each on each of the businesses before I hand it to my colleagues.
For us, the key milestone is our run rate of $10 billion annualized run rate for Jio. As I mentioned, strong revenue growth, EBITDA growth, on the back of both subscriber addition and ARPU. ARPU now at INR 151 versus INR 145 last quarter. Also a significant increase in customer engagement. Overall, we have about 411 million customers as of December. Also, FTTH business continues to scale up very rapidly. In short, strong financial metrics, and also healthy consumer engagement lift explaining the growth. On retail, this is a very strong performance when you look at the operational context in which it was there. Clearly, the benefit coming from fashion and lifestyle, which got back to pre-COVID levels.
From a revenue standpoint, revenues were dragged down because of the transfer of fuel retailing to the O2C business and also some of the one-off factors in the grocery business. We have now more than 12,000 stores and we continue to build our digital and New Commerce. The performance, I would say, has been pretty steady on store and digital commerce. On O2C, clearly benefiting from healthy product deltas. Some of the deltas are multi-year high. We did well in terms of feedstock procurement as well as product yield shifts. We saw feedstock throughput at about 18.2 million tons, which is 8.3% higher quarter-on-quarter. That, along with higher product realization, benefited us, and along with, of course, demand. When you see all the categories of demand across the board, oil demand up 19% QOQ, polymer up 8% QOQ, polyester up 38% QOQ.
Basically, all of them takes demand well above pre-COVID level, maybe a bit lower on the oil demand side, which is at 99, but otherwise, very strong growth in demand. When you look at the key segments, be it health, hygiene, in say, the pipes, especially irrigation and construction, all of them close to 15% growth. This really explains why our quarterly EBITDA grew by 10.3%. Moving to the balance sheet. This quarter, we received INR 73,502 crores. With this, we have completed the capital raise of INR 1,52,000 crores in Jio Platforms and INR 47,300 crores in Reliance Retail. With this, the total cumulative inflow, cash inflow for the year has been INR 2,20,000. This is essentially both JPL and Retail, plus rights issue, plus the asset monetization on fuel retail. We have another INR 40,000 crores of rights issues to be received in 2031.
If you take all that into consideration, we are net cash positive of close to INR 3,000 crore. With this, I'm going to hand over to Kiran and Anshuman.
Thank you. Thank you, Srikanth. Hopefully everybody can hear me. I think if you look at where Jio has come, especially JPL, it has literally been founded on a twofold promise. One is providing the best world-class connectivity solutions, where the promise of connecting everybody, every place, and everything. That journey continues. I think on mobility, we continue to be by far the leader in mobile broadband in India. As Srikanth mentioned earlier on fiber, the journey is really picking up now as we come out of the lockdowns that we have had. As we're picking up momentum, we are already the largest fiber provider in the country, and we have just gotten started. On connecting things, obviously things like narrowband IoT, et cetera, now it's already pan-India available.
I will speak a little bit about some of the IoT solutions that we are rolling out on the back of that. The most exciting frontier for us is the fact that we are at the cusp of 5G, where we're doing something truly special. On the other side, the second pillar for our growth is what we call digital solutions, which are built on top of the digital connectivity infrastructure, where we talk about device solutions, as well as software solutions which are appropriate both for individuals, small businesses, enterprises, and obviously, covering very crucial areas like education and healthcare. All of those solutions are nearing launch. We are going through some internal beta, so we'll have a very exciting future as we enter those verticals.
You see the logos on top, obviously that is a lineup of all the digital solutions which are already in the market. Many of them have been running now for close to four years. Especially the media properties are all multiple hundreds of users on a monthly basis. They're doing well. Next slide. I think I spoke about 5G. Obviously we are by far the leader in India when it comes to 4G broadband. We have a no legacy, all IP, modern network, easily upgradable to 5G, because we architectured it correctly from day one. In 5G, I think the true differentiator that we are really bringing into the market is the fact that almost the entire 5G solution, in addition to being an operator, the entire solution has also been developed internally.
Everything from the radio technology, with respect to macro base stations, with respect to small cells, indoor cells. I think the full gamut of those solutions are being developed internally as well as the entire core software network, which, as many of you may know, is now built on cloud native principles from day one, have also been developed internally, through JPL. Many of these have already undergone successful field trials. What you see here are some of those numbers, like on wireless, we have demonstrated that we can deliver 1 gigabits per second from a single cell, as can be seen here on the picture on the right.
End-to-end solution for 5G, as well as the fact that we have the ability to take that solution and roll it out pan-India because of the infrastructure that we are already having in place, as well as the operational ability to reach them to customers and to get market adoption. I think that will be a true end-to-end capability that Jio can demonstrate in the coming months. When it comes to home, as I mentioned, even though we are just getting started, we have already become the largest fiber service provider in the country. Obviously we see the opportunity to be growing this business by orders of magnitude as we look forward into the coming quarters. If you see this particular slide, on the left-hand side are all the solutions which are being enjoyed by current set of customers.
Everything from the set-top box to obviously the fiber and the Wi-Fi terminals, which brings connectivity to the home. All the best applications, media applications that you can think about are already supported on the set-top box which Jio has developed internally. You can see the lineup here, everybody from Amazon Prime to Netflix to the Disneys, to a full lineup, including popular applications like YouTube and Facebook Watch, et cetera, are also now available on the Jio set-top box. This is just the most prominent among more than 200 applications from independent app developers, also available now through the set-top box. Literally, it is really creating a smart device for the home, connected to the large television in the home. When you look forward, what is coming just down the road are another slew of what we call smart home solutions.
Everything from smart speakers to home IoT solutions to a series of other large screen experiences, especially things like gaming, which are again, being just around the corner with respect to being introduced. Did we lose the slides? Hello? Yeah. Thank you. Similarly, just to double-click on some of those solutions, the Jio set-top box, again, is a story where the hardware design, the operating system, and the entire set of software solutions that go in, other than, of course, the independent developers who continue to contribute. The entire platform has been developed internally while it is already delivering a lot of value to our customers. There's a pipeline of innovations which are mentioned. A few of the prominent ones are mentioned here.
Really strengthening the virtual assistant, which is a voice-based assistant, which really makes it grandma-friendly for anybody to speak to a microphone and to get things done on a TV, which is 10 feet away. Already supported in six Indian languages, Obviously seven more are being developed. Literally, it will become truly a built for India solution, where anybody in any part of the country can really interact with this device, in a very intuitive and friendly way. Everything from creating the next set of smart solutions vis-à-vis recommendations that we can make, that there is better discovery of all the solutions that we have built on the set-top box. The first step towards really monetizing this asset through advertisements and other ecosystem monetization opportunities that we can unlock in the living rooms of really affluent homes who are adopting the fiber solutions.
In addition to that, of course, really making it very intuitive with respect to notifications and ability for multiple profiles, because the living room is a shared facility and there are multiple members who all would want to interact with this. There's a really rich set of functionalities which are also being envisaged in the coming days. The home IoT I just mentioned. Everything from monitoring solutions, energy monitoring, all the smart devices that you can see represented here. Smart lights to smart cameras to really deliver security and other notification solutions. Temperature sensors, motion sensors, water leak detectors, smart plugs so that you can literally turn and turn off appliances with the click of a button or even program it.
Literally everything that you would want to conceive of to convert an Indian home and bring them up to speed or up to par with the smartest homes anywhere in the world. I think the entire set of solutions now are being developed by Jio, these would be obviously made available to the market pretty soon. Next slide, please. I think the next area where I think we are really focusing is what I call the enterprise solution. A very attractive opportunity for us, especially within the enterprise opportunity, I think we are very excited by what we can do for small and medium businesses, which is largely a wide space when it comes to digital solutions. What we have done is really put together what we call an SMB bundle, which is everything that a small business would need to really operate their business.
All of these are solutions which are already available or very close to being offered in the market. Everything from high-speed internet, both mobility as well as fixed, to communication solutions which are IP Centrex and other conferencing-type solutions through tools like JioMeet, which bring together the collaboration that these small businesses need. Through our partnership with Microsoft, really bringing the power of Microsoft 365 as an integrated bundle with the best value that can be availed by these small businesses who are obviously price sensitive. When it comes to taking these solutions and making it visible, a simple solution through one of our startup partners to really set up a website for any business with a few clicks within a few minutes called JioOnline.
Of course, there are certain types of businesses where infotainment is important for the customers who walk into those premises, so obviously our home solution, a variant of that through JioTV+ again becomes relevant for the small and medium businesses. Again, bringing our sister company through Reliance Digital to create a very unique set of offerings vis-à-vis discounts, warranties, very high touch set of services for all the devices that the small business may require. These are common denominator services which we are already making it available in the market and in the coming days obviously very industry specific solutions will also follow, focused on certain industry verticals. Jio IoT. I spoke about home IoT, but now this is really IoT outside of the home context. Smart vehicles, I think these are solutions which are already being piloted in the market with leading auto OEMs.
We have had a number of wins in the past two quarters, and there's a rich pipeline of partners who are lining up already to now adopt Jio IoT solutions. Which is a combination of both hardware solutions as well as network solutions, combined with cloud hosting solutions to really power or collect data and analyze and integrate the information which is being generated by these IoT devices. Everything from connected vehicles or smart vehicles to smart energy metering, where we are working with a number of electricity distribution companies, as well as OEMs who are creating some of these smart meters. To smart city solutions, where things like smart lighting and smart utilities, water utilities, et cetera, again, working with a number of municipal corporations. Connected assets, especially things like diesel gensets, and storage facilities where the operating conditions have to be monitored continuously.
We have built modules which are being piloted in the market. Smart hospitality, where solutions which are built for monitoring the conditions where these hospitality providers are looking to provide the best of environment and best of solutions to their own customers. We are enabling it through some of our IoT solutions. All of these broadly categorized under either industrial or smart city IoT solutions, which we are already piloting with a number of marquee partners across the country. When we look forward to the coming quarter, again, there's a pipeline of partners who are lining up to adopt these solutions. At this point, I can hand it over to Anshuman, who can speak about the operational performance of Jio.
Thank you, Kiran. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to take you through the operating and financial highlights for the quarter for Jio. The quarterly highlights. This was one of the milestone quarters for us. We achieved annualized revenue run rate of $10 billion. The JPL consolidated operating revenue was INR 19,475 crores, with an EBITDA of INR 8,483 crores. The RJIL revenues were at INR 18,492 crores, which is up 32% year-on-year. We saw a very healthy subscriber addition, gross addition of 25.1 million. We ended the quarter at 410.8 million subscribers. There were impact of COVID related and local issues during the quarter, which resulted in higher churn. I'll just update you on that. We see those impacts subsiding now. Things have been stable lately. The FTTH business has been scaling up fairly rapidly, as Kiran spoke about.
We are offering our services across several hundred cities across the country. There is significant demand for these services. That's just getting proven in every new city that we are launching our services in. Very strong customer adoption. We have some restrictions on account of COVID. As those are getting eased, we are able to ramp up our pace of customer addition. The ARPU for the quarter increased to INR 151. If you recollect, this was INR 145 the previous quarter, 4% increase in the ARPU. A reflection of much higher engagement that the customers had on the networks. All in all, sustained momentum in financial and operating performance for the quarter. If you look at the customer engagement, and really a good proxy for that is the overall data traffic on the network. The quarterly data traffic has been showing a healthy increase quarter- on- quarter.
This quarter, we had 1,586 crore GBs on the network. Consistent improvement over the previous quarters. ARPU, I said, was INR 151 and INR 25.1 million gross adds. The customer engagement parameters and customer popularity parameters, I should say, we have done well on most. Customers continue to like Jio for the services that we provide to them. Our aim has been to connect everyone, everywhere, and this is across the country. We continue to gain customer trust and customer loyalty. We have market leadership in 18 out of the 22 circles as of September 20, based on TRAI data. We are a close second in Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir. The wider reach of our LTE network, as well as very deep channel presence, helps us get to our customers.
Of course, the quality of service and the value proposition is what is attracting most customers to us, and continues to do that quarter after quarter. Our network performance has been fairly steady despite the increase in the data consumption of the network and the number of customers. We continue to improve that as well through various initiatives that we have been taking consistently to keep improving our network performance. Of course, Kiran spoke about the rollout of 5G over the next few quarters. On the existing network as well, we have been consistently adding more capacity and maintaining and in fact, improving the quality of our network. Coming to RJIL's financial performance, which continues to be very healthy.
Over the last one year, revenues have gone up 32.4%. To INR 18,492 crore this quarter, and a 45.8% year-on-year growth in EBITDA, which was at INR 8,166 crore during the quarter. EBITDA margin increased to 44.2%. That's over 4% increase in the last one year. We've spoken in the past about the operating leverage of this business as new revenue lines kick in and start getting ramped up. We see that playing out quarter- after- quarter. This was a milestone quarter with us hitting annualized revenue run rate of $10 billion. A summary of the key operating metrics that we report every quarter. Subscriber base at 410.8 million. Net adds of 5.2 against a gross add of 25.2 million, that was really on account of COVID and local issues that we faced. Most of those are now getting better. ARPU improved to INR 151.
The per capita data and voice consumption were both very healthy. Data consumption at 12.9 on a significantly higher subscriber base, and voice consumption at 796 minutes per consumer per month. Overall, voice traffic on the network crossed 10.6 billion minutes a day. At the end, summarizing the JPL consolidated financials, the Jio Platforms Limited, which had operating revenues of INR 19,475 crore, and EBITDA of INR 8,483 crore with net profit at INR 3,486 crore. That's a 15% QoQ increase in the net profit. Across all of the financial metrics, we had strong sequential growth. JPL, of course, is less than a year old as an entity, and therefore the YoY numbers are not represented here. That was a quick summary of the financial performance. I'm going to invite Dinesh now to speak about the Reliance Retail results.
Thank you, Anshuman. Good evening. Let me start with the key messages for Reliance Retail. To start with, the operating environment remained challenging, and I'm going to talk about these in some level of detail as we go forward. From a headlines perspective, the environment still remained very challenging, both on COVID-related restrictions and a host of local issues that impeded business. Profit delivery. Profit was an all-time high for Reliance Retail this time, and if you would have had access to the results, you'd have seen that. Primarily coming on the back of a very strong recovery in our fashion and lifestyle business, which is by far the most profitable part of our retail business. We continue to make very steady progress on expansion across stores, expanding many more stores.
Our digital commerce business, which we had embarked upon with greater vigor as COVID set in, and really expanding merchant partnerships across geographies. Can we have the next? Thanks. Talking about the operating context. Our stores continue to operate under restrictions, although it's been getting better quarter after quarter three better than quarter two, quarter two better than quarter one. We had about 96% of our stores which were operational, clearly better than the 85% that we had preceding quarter. The important part is that 52% of them were fully operational, which essentially meant that the balance were operating with some form of limitation. Limitations on operating hours in terms of footfalls. Really constrained in some way. Overall footfall hasn't quite recovered to pre-COVID levels as yet. It's still at 75% and pretty much at par with the last quarter.
Within businesses, if you look across businesses and across store formats, fashion and lifestyle, and mall stores is where it is still significantly lower. The good part is malls have opened up. Traffic is starting to come back. Even as of December, we had only 50% footfalls in mall stores. Our small towns and cities are recovering faster and clearly seamless operations across the supply chain network and stores were disrupted by a host of local issues and disturbances and stores were remaining shut. That has had an impact and created some challenge in the course of this quarter. Overall message, I'd say, is a gradual recovery but impacted in some pockets. From a revenue standpoint, if you deconstruct our revenues, really, I think the star performer for the quarter has been fashion and lifestyle. It has led the way.
It has surpassed pre-COVID levels, and this has come on the back of the fact that footfalls in this business continue to remain a third lower than where they were pre-COVID. That's a strong comeback on that business. The continuing grocery business and electronic stores are on a sustained growth track. In fact, they continue on the continuing business. They continue to deliver double-digit growth. I use the word continuing because clearly in the grocery business, we've had a set of one-offs that I'm going to talk to you about after this. Our overall reported revenues have been dragged down by the transfer of the petrol retailing business, which used to be a part of Reliance Retail's results.
That's been transferred out to the Reliance BP JV, so a separate entity, and that has meant that we've taken a revenue hit of what used to be recorded under retail books. The second thing we did was to take a very conscious decision, keeping the longer-term view to really transition our Reliance Market stores into fulfillment centers to really enable the expansion of our New Commerce business into those cities. Now, as we beef up supply chain infrastructure across the country, we've realized that in some of these cities, we've had locations which are large, which could really serve as fulfillment centers. What we've done is to transition stores which were revenue generating into fulfillment centers, which will then serve New Commerce operations, and that will enable us to rapidly expand to those cities in the current quarter.
The third is, of course, challenging operating conditions, which have had a bearing on the revenues, the sporadic COVID restrictions, but more importantly, the local issues that came in. Overall, I'll leave you with a message which is saying, on the continuing business, the part of the business which wasn't impacted by these one-offs or these exceptionals, the business rhythm continues to remain very healthy. From a profit standpoint, it's been a record quarter on profit, both EBITDA and net profit. That's been led by the near doubling of fashion and lifestyle as fashion and lifestyle has come back, and I did mention that this is by far the most profitable part of our business. It's very reassuring to see this business come back, and therefore it has contributed to profit delivery. The continued benefit of cost management initiatives, it's something that we had embarked upon.
If you recall, I'd spoken about it in previous quarters as well. This is when COVID struck. We'd embarked on a fairly broad-based cost management program, the benefits of those continue to reflect in our results. We've received a boost from higher investment income. After the fundraise, there is clearly capital which is surplus and which we will look to invest as we go forward. Those have been deployed at this point of time in investments, and we've received a boost from the income that we've earned on those investments. EBITDA, in a sense, crosses a new milestone, as you will make out from the graph on the right, of INR 3,000 crores. Here are the financial headlines, therefore. Segment gross revenue for retail came in at INR 37,845. I'm going to talk quarter-on-quarter comparison because we're still coming off a period of recovery.
That was 8% lower, but fundamentally for the reasons that I just mentioned, transfer out of petrol retail, decision to migrate and transition out Market stores into fulfillment centers, and thirdly, I would say, COVID-related restrictions and local disturbances. Our total EBITDA at INR 3,087 was up 54% over the previous quarter. Profit after tax at INR 1,830 is up 88% over previous quarter. Now, the total EBITDA, I just mentioned this in the previous chart, but the total EBITDA was boosted by investment income of INR 775 crores. If I had to exclude this, the underlying operating margin would be at 7%, which is still way higher than what it was last quarter and same time last year. In many ways reflecting a recovery of margin despite all the operating challenges. Our thrust and priority on expansion continues unabated.
Our store count is now in excess of 12,000. We've opened 327 stores this quarter. YTD, we've opened 630. Our digital commerce business, something that had gained increasing momentum after the onset of COVID, continues to grow scale. It's up 12x year on year. If you look at same time last year versus now, our digital commerce scale is 12x more than what it was. JioMart and AJIO continue to scale new highs. We have new records on whether it's traffic, whether it's customers, whether it's orders. We're extending our New Commerce business. Now over 1 million partners on board with us, and clearly we have trusted partners and working on an inclusive growth model with them.
Clearly, as we build supply chain infrastructure and we've done some of these actions on converting market stores to fulfillment centers, that will start to receive a fillip in terms of onboarding and scale. The most heartening piece is through this phase, one of the very important principles that retail has always stood for in terms of its business model is to really create employment. Through this period of time, ever since COVID struck, retail business has actually generated over or created over 51,000 jobs, as we stand. I think that's a very heartening piece as you look at a host of all the other financial metrics. Coming to each of the businesses, I think on consumer electronics, a few comments.
When you look at our stores in consumer electronics, and I'm now saying excluding the Jio devices, because I will make a comment on the Jio devices specifically. Excluding that, these stores have sustained their growth momentum. They are up double-digit quarter-on-quarter. We've had a very strong festive season performance, clearly with growth ahead of the market, as reported independently. Tier 2 and 3 cities and towns are leading the way, this is a thematic that is playing out across the breadth of our business, whether it's grocery, electronics, fashion, lifestyle. Smaller towns and cities have clearly led the way in terms of both recovery and growth.
A lot of things which have worked for this business in the past, which has allowed us to really deliver very competitive performance, whether it's really campaigns around affordability, product launches, working in close partnership with vendors, offers, all of those have continued to remain key factors and drivers of growth of our performance in this business. Across categories, laptops, tablets, televisions, high-end televisions, and small appliances have really led the performance. Omnichannel capabilities, which is really the build-out of reliancedigital.in, are further augmented across 1,300 cities that we are present. 95% of the orders that were delivered from stores was delivered in under 6 hours. Let me remind you, and I've said this earlier, that this is a very unique capability that we have. It's a unique proposition that we have that we think that at this point of time, we're able to deliver the fastest.
Really 95% of those orders were delivered to customers in under six hours. Yes, we've had a drag from the Jio devices. That's continued into this quarter as well, but there are clearly plans afloat, and a lot of those plans have now moved into the next quarter. When we come back and talk to you the next quarter, you will have seen this being put behind in progress on this front as well. On fashion and lifestyle, and this has been the star performer for the quarter. Clearly, apparel and footwear revenues have staged a strong bounce back. Higher conversions and bill values have offset the lower footfalls. Footfalls, as I mentioned to you, was about a third lower than they were same time last year.
Clearly, a lot of the work that we've done on driving activation in store, the assortment that we've created has really led to higher conversions and higher ticket sizes, and that's really helped drive that growth. I think the big piece for us now is that as restrictions start to ebb and more traffic comes back to stores, this augurs quite well. Impactful regional and event activation has led to a good festive season performance for us. Again, the growth led by smaller tier towns, and I think that's where Trends Small Town as a format is doing really well and leading a lot of the performance in the fashion and apparel space. Continued focus on building digital commerce.
RGO orders are now 5x up they were same time last year. We are seeing a step up across all customer operating metrics, traffic, monthly active users, orders, business, catalog size, pretty much everything really growing exponentially on this one. What we're now doing is to extend digital commerce for fashion and lifestyle onto JioMart as well. It's well established on RGO and we're now taking it on to JioMart as well. We've already launched it on JioMart. It's now live across 3,000 plus pin codes with over 10,000 options that are already listed. This is poised for expansion across cities in the course of the current quarter. Our partnerships, which is very integral part of the business model and the frontier of growth that Reliance Retail is looking at, continues to grow. We are now in the fashion and apparel space, in 1,900 cities.
This is up from where it was last quarter. We have 2x more merchants and 3x more on the catalog to offer. This is again poised for rapid expansion in the quarters ahead as markets start to open up and come back. In our Jio business, we've had a very good quarter, very high double-digit growth, both on a year-on-year basis and almost a sequential doubling of this business. Our portfolio was strengthened, and I think this is where the design capability that we've been investing on over a period of time is really yielding very good benefits. Portfolio strengthened. We've launched a host of collections which are very well received, whether it was Utkala, which is a themed collection based on the heritage of Odisha, a collection called Sparkles for silver, Nitara for children, or Bella, which is the lightweight jewelry.
Clearly, the portfolio being widened over here, and design capability being leveraged. Strong festive season performance and diamond contribution, which had come off as the onset of COVID had come through, is now building back. It's not where it used to be pre-COVID, but clearly inching back to it, so directionally improving. On our luxury and premium brands portfolio, as malls have opened up, this business is 2x over what it was last quarter, and that augurs well. I think as traffic starts to come back into malls, the business is well-positioned. Digital commerce revenues are up 3x from where it was last year, and we have many more mono-brand sites to really complete the entire digital commerce capability for this business. This business has also done is because stores were shut, it had looked at alternative ways to really be able to engage customers.
Two things which it specifically did was to create impactful events. Many of you would have already experienced the luxury shopping festival or Rainbow Express, which are really events which have been very engaging. The other thing which the business did was to really pioneer this whole concept called distance selling, where store associates and store teams really engaged with customers virtually to really be able to engage with them and drive commerce. That's now 20% of the business. It didn't exist pre-COVID, and that's a new capability for this business. On grocery, I'd call it the continuing business because there have been pockets of this business which have been impacted by the decisions that we took and by the local issues that we were confronted with. The continuing business has sustained its healthy double-digit growth momentum.
The headlines revenues were obviously impacted for the reasons I just mentioned. Higher bill values have continued to make up for lower footfalls. JioMart has continued to grow scale, more traffic, more active users, more orders. I can tell you this quarter over last quarter, business is up 50%, so 1.5X over last quarter. JioMart continues to grow very rapidly and exponentially. Robust growth during the festive season, another good season for this business. We continue to leverage brand partnerships and a whole host of activities that we work very closely with the brand partners. We are strengthening our own brand portfolio, looking at them as brands, and Snactac, GoodLife, and Desi Kitchen are some of those brands where we've extended the portfolio in the course of this quarter.
Our Kirana partnerships now have been extended to 23 cities with 2X more and growing adoption of the proposition that we are putting out in working very closely with them as trusted partners. Now that we are building out supply chain and we have some level of readiness available with the transition of the market stores, this is poised to expand across cities in the course of the current quarter. Next one. Okay. Before I end off and give you a sense of what lies ahead for the retail business, I thought I'd just take a minute to really talk to you about this whole inclusive approach to retailing that we're taking. This is very core to the operating model of retail and what are we seeking to do as a retail business. We're going to step backwards and we're saying, you know what?
We will go ahead and go back to really invest in design and development." We will start with that leg of the value chain. Build design expertise, build brands, leverage customer insights, and then work progressively with a whole host of producers, MSMEs, local vendors, manufacturers, regional and national brands, and really play a leading role in developing India's suppliers ecosystem. Alongside investing significantly in building supply chain infrastructure, which has the widest reach, state-of-the-art, a very efficient last mile, which is clearly a mainstay and an important driver of customer satisfaction as digital commerce or digitally enabled businesses grow up with the finest technology enablement to really power that supply chain network. That's what we are really investing in to really then as a route to working with millions of merchants to benefit a whole host of customers and consumers, right?
The route to doing that is JioMart. JioMart essentially is looking to really leverage all that we are doing, between design development, building the vendor ecosystem, and supply chain infrastructure to really enable millions of merchants and benefit customers from all that we are doing. That, in a sense, is at the very core of the approach that we are taking to build out the retail business. That, therefore, brings me to the large thing. Looking ahead, in keeping with that intent, what are we looking to do? We're looking to step up the pace of new store expansion, and this is clearly a large part of it will be in the grocery space. As much about creating the Smart Point network, because the Smart Point network also serves the purpose of really last mile fulfillment for our New Commerce business.
Building season readiness, it's a big quarter for seasons and events, building season readiness for upcoming events, accelerating digital commerce, expanding the category play on JioMart specifically. There's so much more in the works. You heard me say fashion lifestyle already on board. We're looking to extend that across to cities. We're looking to bring electronics on and expand that across cities. That's currently undergoing test. In the groceries side of it, we've clearly got work happening on building out some more models and some more offerings and extending the assortment. JioMart will continue to see increasing action in days ahead. Developing the vendor ecosystem and executing supply chain infrastructure expansion, because this is just so core, and such an enabler to being able to deliver all that I've just spoken about. Growing New Commerce partnerships across the businesses and across geographies.
Really, in many ways, the retail business has this whole funnel of initiatives which are in progress to really be able to fuel expansion, and really deliver on our plans going forward. With that, let me hand over the session to Sanjay for the next piece. Thank you.
Thanks, Dinesh. Let me give you an overview of the quarter gone by and what to expect in the upcoming quarters and years. Quickly, in terms of the production, it's been pretty much flat. The positive news is that the R- Cluster production commenced on December 18t-, and the production has ramped up as per expectations. We are at about 4.5 MMSCMD currently, and we expect to get to the peak production later this year, which is about 12.9 MMSCMD. In terms of CBM, at the current juncture, we've still been quite flat. What we are looking at is capital efficient ways of augmenting the production. US shale, yes, the production has dipped and there are good reasons for that.
It's essentially the weak environment, in terms of the pricing, therefore we have had to calibrate our approach to future further investments. Overall, if you look at production, it's being flat. We obviously expect that to now go up. The upward trend will begin with the KG-D6 production coming on stream with the first of the fields and the future fields poised to come on stream in the subsequent years. In terms of price realization, as we can see, there was a setback due to the COVID, then there's been some amount of demand recovery. Fortunately, in India, we are seeing the demand recover to has already recovered, to an extent trend upwards when compared to the COVID levels. In terms of CBM, also, we've seen a higher price realization. We continue to expect to have that.
U.S. shale, yes, higher, but lower than what it was in 2019. Okay, next slide, please. Thank you. What do we look forward to going forward? Yes, the start of production in KG-D6 does herald a new journey for the gas business in Reliance and for India. We do clearly believe that the gas business is poised to grow by at least two and a half times to three times over the next 10 years. That bodes well in terms of the pricing outlook.
In terms of production, as you're aware, the first field has been commissioned. We're expecting two more fields to come on stream, which is the Satellite Cluster and MJ fields. Combined production expected to peak out at about 30 million, 1 BCFE per day, which is a significant proportion, about 25% of India's current production, and will meet about 15% of India's demand projections. All in all, the big advantage we have right now in terms of the East Coast is that we have a world-class deepwater infrastructure, and in terms of exploration activities, we are looking at opportunities in the Coptic areas and the catchment areas. In case of success, we can bring it on stream in the most capital efficient manner. That's one of the priorities that we are also looking at in the next 20, 18 months, exploration upside and resource operation.
Next slide, please. I think there's a lag or. Yeah, good. Thank you. In terms of the R-cluster, I'd like to say that we've had a very safe and reliable startup. This is Asia's deepest gas field at a water depth greater than 2,000 meters. That's a technology milestone for the oil industry. In terms of India, it is India's first ultra-deepwater gas production project. Production is underway, ramp-up is underway, and things are in line with our expectations. That's a positive, and we believe that sometime towards the second half of this year, we should be able to achieve the peak production, which in itself is like a 10% boost from the current domestic production. In terms of sales, as you're aware, 5 million standard cubic meters of gas have been sold in 2019.
The balance, 7.5 million to 8 million standard cubic meters, we intend to undertake a next round of bidding, which should happen in a few weeks' time. Next slide, please. Thank you. Just to give you an update on the other two projects, the Satellite Cluster. This is very much on track. The wells are drilled and completed, and we are in the final stages, which is the installation campaign, which is currently underway. Once all the connections happen, then we are ready to produce and export the gas. We expect this to all come together by the middle of this year. That will be around 6 million to 7 million standard cubic meters besides the R Cluster. We have the KG-D6 MJ field, which is a gas condensate field.
Drilling has been underway since last year, and it's been on track. Even as the wells get drilled and completed, we are having the FPSO fabrication and subsea production system fabrication going on in parallel. All of this should come together in the fourth quarter FY 2021. That together should bring the production level to about 30 MMSCMD by the calendar year 2023. That's what we like. Like I mentioned, KG-DW-1, we have initiated the exploration campaign over there. Once we have the seismic, we'll look at potentially drilling in the next 12 to 18 months. That's the overall update on the oil and gas segment.
Thank you. Yeah.
Over to you, Srikanth. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Sanjay. As you saw in the financial slides, we have now combined refining and petrochemicals into an integrated O2C segment. For the next 10 minutes, I will describe the rationale and also highlight some of the salient aspects of the combined O2C business. More specifically, I want to talk about our highly integrated configuration, the manufacturing facilities, the diversified product portfolio that we have, the logistics infrastructure that helps movement of both feedstock and products, our market presence and opportunities. While in one sense we will benefit even more with the O2C segment reorganization, in another sense, we are also formalizing an already integrated business. After that, the next 10 minutes after that, quickly wrap up the Q3 O2C, both operating environment and the financial performance. Starting with the O2C business segment.
As you know, now countries have now aligned on the need for a strong global action on climate change, this, we believe, provides us the right opportunity to accelerate our new energy and materials business, which is based on clean and green development. We believe that the reorganizing, the refining and petchem as O2C, it reflects this new strategy as well as the management metrics and facilitates more holistic and agile decision making. It allows us to pursue opportunities for growth with strategic partnership. It allows us to drive the move towards further downstream and getting closer to the customer, provides a sustainable and affordable energy and material solution to meet India's growing needs. Hemant, go to the next slide. When you look at this, we pioneered vertical integration and really in some sense conceived oil to chemical concept well ahead of the industry.
This has actually given us feedstock security. It has provided us with flexibility. It has definitely reduced our volatility in earnings. It has also enabled the margin capture at every level. When you look at Jamnagar super site, we know that it is the world's largest and most integrated O2C complex. It's got an integrated C2 complex with the largest off-gas cracker and downstream polyethylene as well as MEG plants. Also, as you know, the PX facility is the largest singleIn a facility in the world. The cracker cost, we will be in the first quartile only because of our deep integration. We also have nine domestic and three international downstream facilities. Four of them, Hazira, Dahej, Nagothane, and Vadodara, are cracker integrated sites, which are also in turn integrated with downstream chemicals and polyester, polymer, and elastomers.
For ethane, as you know, we have a virtual pipeline in the sense that we have six VLECs that move ethane from surplus U.S. markets. When it lands in India, there is a liquid pipeline carrying ethane to Dahej, Hazira, and Nagothane. I'll move to the next slide. While this does seem like a busy slide, it captures most accurately the extent of the integrated configuration that has helped us to maximize our profits. In Jamnagar, as you can see, apart from producing transportation fuel, it also provides a variety of feedstocks that form part of end products such as PE and PP, as well as elastomers that are actually manufactured in Jamnagar itself. It also uses petcoke in the gasification complex to produce syngas as a source of energy, and also puts to use high-value hydrogen back into the refinery.
In addition, Jamnagar supplies PX and Naphtha and MEG to the other integrated sites in Hazira, Patalganga, Vadodara, and Dahej, which is used for manufacturing petrochemicals. These integrated units, in addition, gets ethane from the U.S., I talked about the floating pipeline, as a source of feedstock. Again, these integrated units in turn also provide feedstocks such as PTA and MEG to the end polyester sites, including Silvassa, Barabanki, and Hoshiarpur. This schematic, in a way, highlights the very deep and unique integration across sites. Go on to the next slide, please. Just a few quick words on the manufacturing facility. As you know, the plants that we built recently, they are state-of-the-art, future-proof engineering standards is what we have used. Most of the assets are less than 20 years, providing a long runway.
You know that we are the second largest producer of PX, fourth largest of PTA, and sixth largest as far as PP and MEG are concerned, and also the world's largest integrated producer. We produce the building blocks, that is ethylene, propylene, aromatics. We have the lowest cost there. Also, we have deployed world-class catalyst and product technologies across facilities. Coupled with the fact that we do have flexibility to process a variety of crude. We do condensate, naphtha, off-gases, ethane, propane. There is a significant flexibility to use feedstocks. Coupled with the multimodal infrastructure support, ensures that we have the best-in-class configuration to maximize on-purpose chemical production. Also, we have consistently maintained high operating rates, and we will be in the top quartile performance in terms of cost and safety and operational excellence. The next slide.
This schematic talks about the portfolio that we have, which cater to a growing consumption market. When you look at it, first, there is a margin capture across all the conversion chains. There is a reduced exposure to individual product cyclicality. We are exposed to the high growth domestic market as an opportunity. When you look at fuels, gasoline, gas oil, ATF, they're all transportation fuels. When you look at polymers like PE, PP, PVC, they go into construction, consumer goods, agriculture, automobile. Elastomers goes on to tires and automobiles. Aromatics and fiber intermediaries goes into polyester and textiles, of course, polyester going into textile apparels and beverages. We believe that we would be the only company globally with this level of integration from oil to polymers, chemicals, polyesters and elastomers. The next slide.
A quick word on the logistics. We have six SPM's and dedicated port jetties and multimodal product evacuation infrastructure. We have tankages at major hubs. We have pan-India warehouses to give just-in-time to the smallest of customers, which is a big asset for us. We have 5x the distribution footprint of our nearest competitor in India. We have strong customers. We serve 11,000 plus customers for chemicals and materials through 16 regional offices and 61 warehouses. In our retail fuel, we are talking about serving 1,300 retail customers per day. We have a digitized and automated supply chain, so there is zero touch order processing. What logistics infrastructure does is, for us, it is a key enabler to reduce feedstock cost, as well as improve our product realization. Moving to the performance indicators, what we believe for O2C are our key performance drivers.
Starting with operational excellence. That is about high utilization levels. Feedstock sourcing is more specifically talking about flexibility to process challenging crude grades, and also multi-feed cracker operations. Energy efficient operations, very important driver. Now, we have increased flexibility with the gasification complex. Our presence across multiple product value chains, starting from polymer, elastomers, polyester, and transportation fuel. Each one, we are either a top global producer, or it's a part of a large integrated chain, or we are able to produce the kind of product and specs that is required, which is again, in transportation fuels, is integrated well with retail outlets. Product placement, big driver. For fuels, it is the export market. For polymer and polyester, it is the domestic.
What is as important, is the fact that we were able to switch this, as you saw in March and April when, what was in the case of the petrochemical products, which was going into the domestic market, we were able to export it. The ability to swing that will remain a key performance driver. Finally, as we get closer to customers, having a customer-centric applications and solutions mindset, is one of the key performance drivers. Therefore, our overall inherent advantages, the operating excellence, and the rich portfolio for us, makes RIL a very leading O2C global player. On the market presence side, as you know, we have a 35% share in polyester and polymers, and these cater to end-use application that, if you recall, I talked about on automobiles and consumer durables, FMCG, packaging, agri, infra, health and hygiene.
I mention all these names because, as you know, these are the opportunities for growth. When you look at chemicals, interestingly, chemical imports now are among the top three items in our trade by value. In that sense, it provides us with a multi-year growth opportunity, and more, it's a high potential for building India self-reliance. Also, our capability to produce niche and specialty chemicals of polymers for diverse end users. Again, the proximity to demand centers and logistics. These give us sustainable cost advantage over competition. Hemant, next slide. When you bring this together, as an integrated and diversified O2C player, scale, size, scale flexibility, integration, makes us very cost competitive and also a reliable production plans globally. Our customer connect and a wide distribution network. More importantly, as we strategically move towards solutions, it helps us really capture the India growth story.
As you move from a 3 trillion, 5 trillion to a 10 trillion economy, where demand growth for these chemicals and materials will continue to grow very sharply. You also juxtapose that against the fact that we are among the lowest in the world in terms of consumption per capita. We therefore believe that this O2C business will play a major role in growing as well as enabling India's growth story. Hemant, next slide, please. Just quickly to the operating environment and financial performance. Here, the key macro trends, you've been tracking it, global economic activity reviving and clearly the vaccine visibility has helped. This quarter, demand for oil did grow by 1.5 million barrels per day QOQ. We also saw a strengthening in prices.
Arab Light-Heavy differential negative for the first time in two decades, because the QOQ fall in OSP of heavy crude was less compared to light. Overall mobility indicators, baseline into January 2020, Asia is X, China is 113, China is 103, strong improvement there. More for us, if you see, demand for polymer is up 8% sequentially, polyester up 38%. Now this takes the demand environment to above pre-COVID levels. Oil demand is also actually up 19%, this is almost 99% of pre-COVID levels. In products like gasoline, diesel, it's well above 102. This economic activity revival, is reflected in a way in the commodity markets. Moving to specifically on polymers. You can see that 8% I talked about, specifically PP has been strong at 12%.
Global cracker operating rates continue to be high at 86%, improvement over 84% in the previous quarter. As I mentioned, the demand for polymer coming from the health and hygiene sector and the irrigation and construction sector, where demand grew by 15%. When you look at the margins, very sharp improvement there. When you look at specifically PP, LDPE or naphtha, these are actually five and 10-year highs. More so, PVC especially has gone above 10-year levels. It's very strong environment. Of course, it was also benefited by the fact that there has been some supply constraint, for example, on container, which also helped to boost the margins. Still, I would say the driver is coming from very strong, sustained recovery in demand for all the key consumption markets.
On polyester side, this is a strong story, up 38%, as I mentioned, demand above pre-COVID levels on the back of festival season and the fact that the economy is growing. Chain margins, you can see $410-$452, essentially up 10% on the back of firm operating rates and declining inventories. You can see the downstream exit rates for December, where operating rates in spinning is at 95%, knitting at 74, weaving at 76 and processing 79. Also, specific margins for POY, FDY, FPY have been strong. Next slide, Hemant. On transportation fuels, there is a slight improvement in demand in gas oil globally to 27.6 million barrels per day. Overall, gas oil market remained weak because of oversupply coming on account of refinery rates in Asia.
Inventory, as you could see in the box, 195 there, which is million barrels, which continues to be high when you compare it to 3Q FY 2020. Gas pool continues to be well supplied because of yield shifts on lower jet fuel demand. That is pressurizing gas oil a bit. On ATF, you can see that the global mobility tracker for air travel is about 54%. Yes, it is above 45, it is still a way to go in terms of recovery there. You do see a sharp increase in cracks from -0.7 to 2.4 sequentially. This is also on the back of stocking by South Korea and Japan on account of winter. Overall mid distillate cracks, we believe are showing early signs of improvement with increased mobility. Finally, on transportation fuels, this gasoline demand was lower by 0.5 million barrels.
This, I would say, is more seasonal because of winter as well as the lockdowns in U.S. and Europe. There has been a slight marginal improvement in cracks, and this will continue a bit constrained by high inventories and regional exports from China. Next slide, Hemant. Here you can see that our throughput for this quarter was at 18.2 million tons. This is up 8.3% QOQ. As you know, last time we had a planned CDU turnaround in second quarter. We are providing now production meant for sale, which means that across transportation fuels, polymer, fiber intermediaries, polyester and chemicals, we are talking about the production meant for sale. That means the internal consumption of feedstock is not part of this number. It's easy for people to understand what has been meant for sale. That is at about 16.2 million tons.
An increase over 14.9 in the previous quarter. Our utilization rates have been high. Cracker utilization at 96. You recall that the global average is about close to 85. Our jet production also increased in line with some of the improved regrades. We rebalanced fuel mix to include more liquids due to higher LNG costs. Paraxylene, orthoxylene production was also optimized based on economics. We have maintained our market share with the both optimization of product mix as well as feedstock. Hemant. Bringing it together in terms of overall numbers, you can see revenues at INR 83,800 crores, 10% higher on a quarter-on-quarter basis. EBITDA INR 9,756, which is again 10.3%. Margin for 3Q, 2Q has been 11.6% flat. Just to summarize, we talked about all the reasons for that.
The growth is really about demand growth, high utilization rates, and the fact that polyester chain and polymer margins have strengthened a lot, which kind of offsets some of the weakness we saw in transportation fuel. We also benefited from the feedstock flexibility, especially when we did shift our heavy crude to Latin America, and also some of our naphtha cracking enhanced because of the improved product economics. Firm downstream margins and demand recovery aided our EBITDA growth. Finally, going into our near-term outlook for macro, we think 2021 should be 96.6, higher than this year for sure but slightly below what we saw in 2019. This increase in itself, we believe, will bring a rebound in fuels and downstream products in India. Margin trends, fuel margins, we do see a steady improvement with this demand revival and more importantly, the inventory drawdown.
On specific products like PVC and PP, the outlook remains very constructive with favorable demand supply. Polyester chain margins are expected to remain firm on improving end markets, and we saw some of the utilization in the previous slides. From a more broader sustainable growth, we believe that our under-penetrated domestic market and our strong competitive position across products, and the fact that we are focusing much more on customer-centric offerings of niche polymer products will help sustain growth for us. The near-term challenges are there, which can come from product stock and supply from China, and if there are any increased lockdowns in U.S. and Europe. Next. Just concluding comments. Our path to energy transition, as we saw some of our best-in-class O2C assets have now been carved into Reliance O2C Limited.
The focus will be on maximization of profitability from further downstream chemicals and materials to meet India's demand. It will involve reducing our transportation fuel footprint in a phased manner. The downstream integration, we expect it to be asset-light through alliances and partnerships. RIL will incubate a new energy and new materials platform. Focus will be on clean and green affordable energy, as well as sustainable materials of the future. This value will be created, we believe, through technology and innovation. We do target net carbon zero by 2035. Yeah. If I were to bring together all our growth engines in one slide, which we believe will help us create value. Starting with Reliance Jio, growth will come from subscriber ramp-up, it will come from enterprise solutions, it will come from narrowband IoT and scaling up of our digital platform.
In retail, we see growth coming from JioMart, which will create value for the entire ecosystem because of its partnership with small merchants, kiranas, and farmers. In O2C, the value comes from going or maximizing further downstream, reducing our transportation fuel, and a focus on clean and green energy platforms. As Sanjay talked about, we'll ramp up domestic oil and gas production and increasing going forward, synergize our financial services with consumer platforms. RIL will continue its focus on identifying, nurturing new growth platforms. We do have multiple engines of growth which are firing, and the focus clearly is on consumers and technology. This really brings me to the end of the presentation, and thank you so much for getting on the call, and handing it back to Srini.
Thank you, Srikanth. As always, please, if you have any queries, please do send us on email, and we'll be happy to answer them. Thank you very much for staying up quite late and listening patiently to all our presentations. Thank you, and good night.