My dear shareholders, a very good morning to each and every one of you. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the 42nd Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries Limited. The company's accounts for the year ended March 31, 2019, along with the directors and the auditors report, a letter to the shareholders, and management and discussion analysis have already been circulated to you. With your permission, I would like to take them as read. Dear shareholders, in the golden decade of Reliance, I am proud to inform you that it was yet another year of robust and record performance. Last year, Reliance became India's largest and most profitable company, both in the public and the private sectors. We are the only diversified multi-sector Indian enterprise with three major growth engines in one single corporate entity. Our oil to chemicals division, Jio, and Retail.
All three have done exceedingly well in the past year. We are also incubating new growth engines within Reliance. Skeptics used to say that Reliance cannot succeed in a consumer business. Jio and Reliance Retail have proved them wrong. If these two consumer businesses had been separately listed companies, each would be ranked among the top 10 in India in terms of value. Jio crossed the 340 million subscriber mark to remain the world's fastest growing digital services company. Today, Jio is India's largest telecom enterprise in terms of subscribers, revenues, and profits. Jio has truly become the digital gateway of India. Reliance Retail has crossed INR 130,000 crore turnover to cement its position as India's largest retailer. It is four times larger than the second largest retail player, and it is larger than all other major retailers put together.
Our two consumer businesses now collectively contribute nearly 32% to the consolidated EBITDA, up from 2% five years ago. The day is not far when their share would be 50% of our overall EBITDA. The third growth engine is our oils to chemicals business. Let me now highlight Reliance's record contribution to the Indian economy in the last year. We continue to be India's largest exporter at INR 224,391 crores and with exports to over 107 countries, accounting for 9.8% of India's total merchandise export. We continue to be the highest payer of customs and excise duty in the private sector at INR 26,379 crores last year. We also continue to be the highest payer of GST amongst all public and private sector companies at INR 67,320 crores last year. We were also the highest payer of income tax in the private sector at INR 12,191 crores.
Dear shareholders, the coming year will mark the beginning of the most ambitious value creation strategy in the history of Reliance and in the history of India. At the heart of our new value creation strategy is our innovative philosophy of transforming relationships into partnerships. Partnerships with leading global and Indian companies, partnerships with millions of local businesses, SMEs, and micro enterprises across India, partnerships with new tech-enabled businesses, platforms, and social enterprises. All these partnerships will form a new business coalition capable of creating exponential value for our five stakeholders, the Indian economy, the Indian people, our customers, employees, and shareholders. Dear shareholders, the future of India and also the future of Reliance has never looked brighter to me than now. As India is getting transformed into a new India, Reliance will transform itself into a new Reliance.
Our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, has set the goal of making India a $5 trillion economy by 2024. Indeed, I fully endorse this ambitious goal. I can clearly see India becoming a $10 trillion economy by 2030 with every Indian as a beneficiary. This is achievable, this is necessary, and this, I believe, is inevitable. I say this because digital-driven GDP growth is not only exponential but also can be inclusive. Reliance's own value creation strategy will prove this. The slowdown in some sectors of the economy is temporary. The fundamentals of the Indian economy are very strong. The opportunities will grow further with structural reforms. India has political stability. The government is laying the foundation of new institutions for business promotion and regulation. New long-term measures are being taken to improve ease of living for all citizens and reduce income inequity. India is rising.
No power on Earth can stop India from rising higher. Dear shareowners, let me focus on Reliance's most valuable business today, the O2C division. Our oil-to-chemicals division is formed by combining our petrochemicals and refining business. Reliance has the most complex and integrated oil-to-chemicals business globally. Our oil-to-chemicals business has the ability to convert oil into high-value chemicals and performance materials that will significantly improve the quality of life of Indians. The world moves towards renewable energy sources and electrical vehicles, Reliance has positioned itself far ahead of the curve to create new value. Our oil-to-chemicals business achieved a revenue of INR 5.7 lakh crores, exports of INR 2.2 lakh crores and EBITDA of INR 52,041 crores. Reliance and BP signed a joint venture agreement in petroleum retailing business. In this initiative, BP is acquiring 49% stake in our petrol retail business.
Reliance will get INR 7,000 crore from BP for this transaction. My dear shareholders, I am now delighted to make an announcement about the biggest foreign investment in the history of Reliance. It is also amongst the largest foreign investments ever in India. Saudi Aramco and Reliance have agreed to form a long-term partnership in our oil-to-chemicals division. In terms of the understanding between the parties, Saudi Aramco will invest in Reliance for a 20% stake in our oil-to-chemicals division at an enterprise value of $75 billion or over INR 5.3 lakh crore. This investment by Saudi Aramco is subject to due diligence, definitive agreements, regulatory, and other customary approvals. This partnership will cover all of Reliance's refining and petrochemical assets, including its 51% stake in the petroleum retail JV. Saudi Aramco will also supply 500,000 barrels a day of crude oil on a long-term basis to RIL's Jamnagar refinery.
This signifies perfect synergy between the world's largest oil producer and the world's largest integrated refinery and petrochemicals complex. Since its inception, our Jamnagar refinery has been processing Saudi oil every single day for 20 years. Now we have transformed our longstanding relationship of two decades based on mutual trust into a partnership with tremendous growth potential. I feel privileged to welcome Saudi Aramco, which is the largest business enterprise in the world, to India. I am grateful to our visionary leaders, our own honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, and His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, who have laid the foundation for strategic cooperation between India and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Dear shareholders, I am happy that our natural gas business will soon regain its place of pride in Reliance's value creation strategy.
With Reliance de-emphasizing its shale gas business in the U.S., we are currently focused only on India. In our coal bed methane blocks, we are focusing on augmenting production. The joint venture with BP will play a major role as a producer of natural gas. With world-class deepwater infrastructure in the east coast of India, our JV is uniquely positioned to monetize over 3 trillion cu ft of discovered gas resources in the KG-D6 block. Our JV has committed an investment of INR 35,000 crores in the three deep water fields in this block. The project to develop these gas fields are amongst the most complex being executed anywhere in the world. This will commence production from the first half of 2020, with an expected peak production of 1 billion cu ft per day, which is equivalent to nearly 30% of India's current indigenous gas production.
The JV will emerge as a major contributor to India's energy security. Dear friends, now I turn to the youngest member of the Reliance family, Jio. India is today a $2.5 trillion economy. Statistics from large economies show that nearly 3%-5% of their GDP is spent on digital services. Even at 3%, this translates to a potential Indian digital services spend of nearly INR 5 lakh crore annually. I believe that Jio is ideally placed to earn a significant proportion of this technology-driven value addition to our economy. Friends, Jio was founded with the vision to bring digital life to every Indian, and this vision was built on two pillars. The first was digital connectivity, where Jio would connect everyone, every place, and everything with the highest quality and affordability.
The second was to build digital platforms and solutions built to suit the unique requirements of India and Indians spanning all walks of life like entertainment, e-commerce, financial services, education, healthcare, agriculture, e-governance, and everything beyond. Let me begin with digital connectivity. On 5th September this year, Jio turns three years old. What an incredible three years it has been. In the sacred Upanishads, we have the famous mantra, "Tamasoma jyotir gamaya," which means lead us from darkness to light. In a manner of speaking, before Jio, India was data dark, and now Jio has made India data shining bright. Friends, today, Jio's customer base has crossed 340 million users, and still we are signing up more than 10 million new customers every month. The potential for growth is immense, and 500 million customers is now, I believe, well within our reach.
On behalf of the entire Jio family, thank you, India, for the enormous trust that you have placed in us. Thank you, India, again, from the bottom of my heart. Because of you India, because of you, Jio has not only become the largest operator in India, but also the second-largest operator in the world in a single country. Dear shareholders, your company has invested nearly INR 3.5 lakh crore towards creating a state-of-the-art digital infrastructure across India with largest optical fiber footprint. Recently, we have divested about INR 1.25 lakh crore of hard infrastructure into separate infrastructure investment trusts or InvITs to better monetize and unlock value from these assets. Through these investments, we have created world-class, legacy-free, future-proof assets, all of which are fixed mobile converged. The core and the aggregation layers of our converged network are already 5G ready today.
Because of our early adoption of ongoing enhancements to LTE technology, our wireless network is already 4G+, and we can upgrade this to 5G at minimum incremental cost. Thanks to Jio's converged network architecture, we can offer even faster fixed broadband to homes and business establishments today. Friends, unlike other industry players, your company has had the foresight to pre-invest in network assets. For this reason, I can report to you today that the investment cycle of Jio is now complete. Only marginal investments in access are now required to grow capacity to meet the growing demand. This gives us tremendous operating leverage and superior returns on our investment for years to come. Friends, while most of our investments are complete, we have so far fired up just one of the engines of revenue generation for Jio, namely mobile broadband.
Even with one engine, Jio has been profitable from its first quarter of commercial operations. Now we are ready to kickstart four more engines of connectivity revenue for Jio. They are, first, Internet of Things or IoT for all over India. Second, home broadband services. Third, enterprise broadband services. Fourth, broadband for small and medium businesses. I'm glad to report that the revenues from each of these engines will kick in within this financial year itself. Let me now describe these new growth engines. First, Internet of Things. Jio has developed an innovative service on its pan-India 4G network called Narrowband Internet of Things or NB-IoT. Using NB-IoT, data from billions of smart sensors, whether residential, industrial, or public, can be collected from across India with the highest reliability and lowest cost.
To take just one example, there are over 300 million electricity meters which need to be connected digitally for real-time monitoring and for giving consumers full visibility and control of cost and quality. Going forward, each home and business premise will have dozens of connected device. Within another two years, it is estimated that there will be more than 2 billion connected IoT devices in our country. Jio aims to connect at least one billion of these on Jio's IoT platform, and this translates into a INR 20,000 crore per year revenue opportunity for Jio. Jio's IoT platform will be commercially available starting 1st January 2020. Now, the second engine, home broadband. Last year, I had shared with you Jio's plan for optical fiber fixed-line broadband service called JioFiber.
Starting August 15th of last year, we invited registrations of interest from across India so that we could prioritize Jio Fiber rollout into localities with the highest interest. The response was simply overwhelming. We received over 15 million registrations from nearly 1,600 towns. Based on these registrations, we have drawn up a plan to reach 20 million residences and 15 million business establishments in these 1,600 towns. Over the past year, we have built significant momentum in our Jio Fiber rollout, and we are confident that we will complete our network rollout within the next 12 months. During the last year, we also installed Jio Fiber on a trial basis in nearly 500,000 homes. That is 5 lakh homes to fine-tune our services and based on actual customer feedback, improve our services.
We have found that these trial homes on an average are consuming more than 100 GB per month, and this usage is increasing with each passing day. Friends, with JioFiber, you get lightning-fast broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps. You get a landline phone connection at no additional cost. You get a digital set-top box that opens up unparalleled digital experiences within your home. Ultra-high definition entertainment, virtual reality content, multi-party video conferencing, voice-enabled virtual assistants, interactive gaming, home security, and many other smart home solutions. The digital possibilities are endless. Then there is television, which is still at the heart of the Indian home. Television service in India is a classic small business success story where local cable operators or LCOs played a pioneering role.
In recent years, competition from DTH operators have threatened the viability of nearly 1 lakh LCOs who still operate across India. As firm supporters of local and small businesses, Jio wanted to ensure that these LCOs continue to serve their communities. Earlier this year, RIL acquired controlling stakes in three leading cable MSOs, Hathway, Den and GTPL, who have direct relationships with over 30,000 LCOs. Over the past months, we have worked with our MSOs to upgrade their infrastructure to world-class standards. After these upgrades, our LCO partners will now be able to offer the largest bouquet of high-definition channels to customers with better features, reliability, and customer experience, better even than DTH. Now we have gone one step further.
We have designed our Jio Set-Top Box to accept the broadcast cable TV signals from our LCO partners, so that from now, every JioFiber home, our LCO partners will have access and will continue to have a steady stream of revenue for their broadcast TV business. We look forward to extending this partnership to all the local cable operators across the country. For small and medium businesses, JioFiber enables a powerful combination of fixed-line connectivity and cloud applications, leapfrogging them from no technology to having a complete lineup of cutting-edge plug-and-play technology-enabled tools. This will make them productive from day one and empower them to succeed in the marketplace, even against much larger enterprises. I believe that in their success lies the recipe for sustainable growth and large-scale employment for the Indian economy. Finally, large enterprises.
In the past, enterprises had no choice but to make large expenditures of time, money and effort to keep pace with technology. Today, cloud-based solutions provide out-of-the-box capabilities, which are easier, faster, and cheaper to adopt. JioFiber and Jio's cloud solutions level the playing field for Indian enterprises, enabling them to accelerate their digital transformation and compete globally using the very same technologies that are used by global majors. Friends, I now want to invite Isha, Akash, and Kiran on the stage to demonstrate some of the game-changing features of JioFiber.
Good afternoon to our Reliance family. We look forward to today to showcase our new digital services that will enable a digital society and continue taking India to the forefront of the digital age.
The ability to communicate and the ability to absorb information form the foundation of our evolution. Our means for this has evolved manyfold just in the last century. From letter writing and physically searching for centuries-old information, today, we have come a long way. What we're about to demo today is the future of communication and information.
Today, with Jio Fiber services, we'll show you that the future is truly here.
Last year, we promised you ultra-high internet speeds on Jio Fiber. Today, our speeds start at 100 Mbps and go all the way up to 1 Gbps.
As we speak, more than 5 lakh homes are testing JioFiber internet and voice services, making it the largest beta program in India.
We've connected the JioFiber services and the Jio Set-Top Box right here in this hall. Can we please have the TV on stage? Can we also mirror the Jio Set-Top Box onto the large screen, please? Thank you.
There we go. Let's try to run a speed test. The speed test should be starting, and there we go.
Wow.
It has reached 1 Gbps. Delivered as promised. Today, we will use our time with you to show you some of the services that will truly be unique with speeds like this. Services that will hopefully convince you that the future is indeed here.
During the last AGM, we demonstrated a one-to-one video calling feature on our set-top box. Today, it's one of our most popular features on the Jio network. 10 crore Indian users make video calls every month on Jio. We have worked hard to make this feature even better. Today, we want to introduce to you the very first video conferencing solution for Indian homes.
With this, you can make video calls from your TV screen and conduct multi-party video conferences all from your home.
I'm going to connect four people at different locations using the Jio Set-Top Box and a USB camera attached to this TV.
Kiran, I'm waiting to see your reaction.
Oh, wow.
Kiran, there's a surprise for you now.
Oh, wow. Phenomenal.
Hi, everyone.
Hi.
Well, it's a pleasant surprise. Nice to meet all of you.
Hey, Kiran.
Actually, on screen I can see my family. My wife, Minu, my son, Thomas, and my daughter, Tara, all sitting there. How are you?
How are you?
Well, I hope you're not nervous, Thomas. There are thousands of people sitting here looking at you. Why don't you say hello?
I can do this. Hi, everyone.
That's good.
Appa, are you nervous?
Okay, I'll talk to you later about that. I can also see my friend who's currently in New Jersey, I think. He's my classmate from school, Subhashish. Hi, how are you, Subhashish? Looks like you are relaxing at home after a great weekend.
Hi, Kiran. Good to see you. Well, you know how it is, a long, exciting weekend. Hey, it looks like you guys are having way more fun out there.
Of course. After all, we work for Jio. I can also see my old family friend, Pathak-ji, who's always, I don't know, traveling somewhere or the other all the time, Pathak-ji.
Hi. Well, Kiran bhai, don't ask. It's been a crazy week. Too much of travel. Fortunately, I was able to connect to your TV from the tablet.
Yeah. That's great. I think we have that feature. Nice meeting all of you. I think, as you can see, we are a little bit caught up here, so I'll talk to you all later. Bye.
See you. Bye. Bye. Bye to you all. Thank you. Bye.
Wasn't that entirely seamless and so efficient?
Yeah. This is a truly unique solution. This solution is unique because it's device-agnostic. Kiran's family was connected at their home using our Jio Set-Top Box. Kiran's classmate from New York joined us from using his laptop, and Kiran's friend was using a mobile phone to join the conference.
This service is interoperable between devices, including the TV at your home. Best of all, you can video conference with anyone, anywhere in the world, for absolutely free.
Spending thousands of rupees on video conferencing setups are now history. Now we can do it at the comfort of our homes.
Absolutely. It is the first of its kind home video calling and conferencing solution in India. This will bring your loved ones even closer to you than ever before.
Let's now talk a little bit about the Jio Set-Top Box. This is a box full of magic. It has hundreds of features and services inside it, like video calling and conferencing, voice search, unlimited premium content, and a console-like gaming experience.
With this, we're launching India's first multiplayer online network. This will be at par with the leading gaming platforms globally. To showcase the power of this network, I want to play a game of FIFA versus a friend of mine, Tarun. He's in Delhi currently, so I'm going to take a little minute to connect with him and start my game of FIFA, while Kiran and Isha walk you through the features.
While Akash connects, let us tell you a little bit about the Jio Set-Top Box. First, the Jio Set-Top Box supports almost all gaming controllers and shows soft controller on your smartphone. Second, the gaming graphics on Jio Set-Top Box are at par with the best in the world. Third, it also supports gameplay in 4K.
Not only can you do multiplayer gaming from anywhere in the country, you can also do social gaming, where all your friends can join via video conference and enjoy gaming together virtually. The biggest highlight is that with JioFiber, gamers will get a much desired zero latency gaming experience.
Perfect timing. I'm ready. I've selected Arsenal and Tarun has chosen Manchester United. I not only get to play my favorite game at the AGM, but I also get to showcase to you what it will exactly look like when you play zero latency online gaming anywhere in India and the graphics card that we have enjoyed.
Okay.
I'm going to try and score a goal as soon as I can.
Oh, there you go.
There we go.
Wow.
It's a goal in the very first minute.
Thank you. I will do better when I am there. Thank you.
That's great.
Of course, we will have all of the top of chart games from leading game publishers like Tencent, Gameloft, Microsoft, and many more.
Now we're excited to show you a truly futuristic feature. You may move the TV back. This device is really one out of the future. Can I request Isha to give an explanation about it?
Augmented reality, or AR, and virtual reality, or VR, are truly powerful technologies. We have mixed reality or MR, which is a hybrid of AR and VR. Jio Fiber is completely mixed reality capable.
With Tesseract, a leading mixed reality startup that Jio has invested in, we will show you how MR supported by JioFiber will transform our lives with three specific use cases: shopping, education, and entertainment. Let's wear our MR headsets.
Oh, thank you.
Can we also have one of our headsets mirrored on the screen, please, so the audience can see what we're viewing? Perfect. Thank you.
MR has hundreds of use cases, but let's explore shopping first.
To begin with, let's bring onto stage some of the clothes Akash would like to shop for. Perhaps formal wear? Yeah.
Isha, online shopping always leaves me a bit confused. I never know how it will actually fit or what color will really look like. Today, we have something truly game changing, a 3D hologram that Jio has developed in our own MR lab. Let me load my hologram to show just one such use case today.
Wow.
I can finally see which shirt color suits me best and which one I know I will select. Maybe not this green one. Maybe no, maybe next.
Yeah, I think the red one suits you best. Maybe we should buy that.
Okay, great. I'll just put it into my cart, and then I'm sure it'll deliver home soon. There we go.
There we go. The shirt is in the cart.
Now that's what you call an immersive shopping experience, right in the comfort of your home. Let's now move on to our second use case, education.
With Jio MR, we can take learning to a whole new era of interactivity. Everything we study, we will now be able to experience in all three dimensions. Something we never had when at least I was in school.
The use of MR in education will increase the level of engagement and understanding in students, and can be applied to all disciplines.
One of my favorite modules in school was learning about the solar system. Today, I want to show you how we can learn the simple equation of time, speed, and distance in the context of our solar system. Let me bring up our solar system onto our screen. That's our solar system. The blue dot is the Earth. From this distance, it looks beautiful, doesn't it?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Can you calculate the time taken for Chandrayaan to travel from Earth to the Moon?
The simplest way to do that would be to use the time distance equation, where time equals distance between the Earth and the Moon, divided by the speed at which Chandrayaan travels. As we can see, using this incredibly powerful visual aid, the distance is not a straight path. The spaceship actually curves around the planet. Calculating this would be slightly more complex. It becomes so easy to understand when you see it in all three dimensions. By the way, seeing it like this really makes you appreciate the immense complexity of actually reaching the Moon. Let us give a big round of applause to ISRO's all-women team of Chandrayaan.
Guys, that reminds me. Did you know that the amount of fiber laid by Jio can actually circle the Earth 11 x?
That's incredible. This technology and content is powered by yet another startup that Jio has invested in, Embibe, an AI-powered learning platform. Now, let us move to the third and final MR feature that we're going to showcase tonight, entertainment in mixed reality.
Now, this is my favorite. The larger the size of the screen, the more fun it is to watch your favorite content. What if we could experience a movie as if we were in a large home theater simply by wearing our MR headset? To show you what I mean, let me play one of the most popular movies that we have from JioCinema.
[Presentation]
Isha, what do you think?
It's great. What would make it even more captivating is if we could have the experience of a theater-sized screen.
Wait a second, Isha. It's possible. After all, we have an MR headset. In our headsets, we can actually watch the same movie as if we are sitting in a large screen theater. Let's try this.
[Presentation]
It's like you're sitting in a real cinema hall, isn't it?
Unbelievable. There's so much more to show you, but this brings us to the end of our demos for today. We can finally take our headsets off.
This mixed reality device that you're seeing is called the Jio Holoboard, and it is made by Tesseract, which is one of the startups that Jio has invested in. It'll be available for purchase in the market very soon, and at an extremely affordable price.
We hope you enjoyed the experiences of these demos today. You, our customers, are at the heart of everything that we do, and all of this has been designed with the sole purpose of giving you a delightful experience.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for JioFiber services. As always, we will continue working hard to bring more and more amazing services to your home and take JioFiber to the next level. Thank you very much today and now let me invite our Chairman back onto the stage.
Thank you, Isha, Akash, and Kiran. That was phenomenal. What encourages me the most is all of this is done by young Indian startups that Jio has invested in. This is the power of the new India, the young India. Friends, now let me turn to the obvious question. When is JioFiber going to be available, and how much will it cost? Today, I want to announce that starting 5th September, on the third anniversary of Jio's launch, we are launching JioFiber services on a commercial basis across India. Let me now give you a preview of the JioFiber tariffs. JioFiber tariffs are based on four strong and powerful principles. First, JioFiber will launch with a lineup of simple and easy-to-understand tariff plans.
On performance, the average fixed-line download speed in the U.S., which is the most developed economy, is around 90 Mbps. In India, even the most basic JioFiber plans will start with 100 Mbps at the lowest cost. We will have plans to go all the way to 1 Gbps or 1,000 Mbps. India will have quality of broadband that is no less than anybody in the world. As I said, this will disproportionately improve the quality of fixed-line data in India. On price, we are pricing our plans at less than 1/10 the global rates to make it accessible for all Indian homes. JioFiber plans will be priced between INR 700 -INR 10,000 a month to suit every budget and every need and every segment. Second, customers should pay for only one service, either voice or data, and not both.
With this, I am pleased to announce that voice calls from home to any Indian operator, mobile or fixed, will be absolutely free forever. On fixed line international voice calling, we are today ending the era of high international calling rates on landlines by announcing the lowest fixed line rates for international calling through two initiatives. First, the default tariffs on your Jio home phone will be 1/5-1/10 of the existing industry tariffs. Second, we are announcing an unlimited international calling pack at only INR 500 per month to the U.S. and Canada. Thereby making it easy for families to connect. Third, we are substantially simplifying the purchase and consumption of content. Today, many of us pay for and keep track of multiple subscriptions to multiple applications just to watch our favorite movies and TV shows. This is both expensive and cumbersome.
Today, I am announcing that JioFiber plans will come bundled with subscriptions to most leading premium OTT applications. For the first time in India, we are introducing a disruptive concept of watching new movies. Premium JioFiber customers will be able to watch movies in their living rooms the same day these movies are released in theaters. We call this Jio First-Day-First-Show. We plan to launch this service in the middle of 2020. Fourth, we are launching a special mobility service for our JioFiber users called JioPostPaid Plus to deliver a platinum-grade service and product experience. Some of the unique features of this service are, one, it will be India's first priority SIM setup and MNP service at home, where your connection will be moved to Jio without changing your number by our service personnel visiting your home.
Second, seamless data and voice connectivity across all your devices, both at home and outside. Third, unprecedented family plans, one data plan for better control on all GBs and sharing with all members of your family. Fourth, international roaming at a fraction of a cost with superior service experience. Fifth, phone upgrades at preferential rates. Sixth, all your home solutions on the screen of your phone available to you 24 /7. The complete details of our tariffs will be available from 5th September 2019 on jio.com and MyJio application. As usual, there is one more thing. The experience of Jio Fiber and Jio Set-Top Box really comes to life when combined with an LED television. Jio Fiber customers who opt for our annual plans, which we call Jio Forever Plans, will get an HD or 4K LED television and a 4K Set-Top Box absolutely free.
We are calling this the JioFiber Welcome Offer. I invite all of you to make the most of the Jio Welcome Offer and sign up for JioFiber as soon as it is available in your neighborhoods. Friends, let me now move to the second pillar of Jio Digital Life. Digital platforms and solutions. Today, Jio is already a software company. Jio has over 6,000 software engineers, and we are continuing to attract technology talent from across India and the world. Jio is also investing in a growing ecosystem of technology startups. As on date, we have invested in 14 startups that embody the Jio DNA and developed unique capabilities in their respective fields with a total of 1,500 talented engineers. This is yet another way we are building talent.
On the back of this talent, we are now investing in scaling up advanced technologies in our own country, even ahead of the rest of the world. Let me describe our plans for a few of these. First, blockchain technology all over India. Using blockchain, we can deliver unprecedented security, trust, automation, and efficiency to almost any type of transaction. This is a vital capability for India, especially for modernizing our supply chains for agriculture produce and other goods, which form the lifeblood of our economy. Using blockchain, we also have the opportunity to invent a brand-new model for data privacy, where Indian data, especially customer data, is owned and controlled by the Indian people and not by corporates, especially global corporations. Data is wealth, and Indian wealth must remain in India.
Over the next 12 months, Jio will install across India, one of the largest blockchain networks in the world, with tens of thousands of nodes operational on day one. Second, edge computing and virtual and mixed reality content. As you saw in the demo, the next frontier of content is immersive. This creates exciting new possibilities for entertainment, shopping, gaming, and most importantly, for education. Delivering immersive content to hundreds of millions of users requires a well-integrated solution spanning connectivity, data storage, and real-time computing. We need to deploy such solutions at the edge of the network, or in other words, closer to where our users are. Today, Jio is setting up a pan-India edge computing and content distribution network, again, starting with tens of thousands of nodes. This means that your favorite content and applications will be nearer to you, so even faster downloads and faster response times.
India and its 1,600 cities will be amongst the first in the world for Indian residences to experience mixed reality and augmented reality and virtual reality on JioFiber. Finally, cloud infrastructure across India. To leapfrog the world, it is a national imperative to develop a nationwide cloud computing infrastructure that is both cutting edge and affordable. There are just a handful of companies in the world who can be considered at the cutting edge of cloud technologies. I want to talk to you about one such company, Microsoft. Today, Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure, is one of the world's leading cloud platforms. Today, I am privileged to announce that Jio and Microsoft have entered into a globally unique long-term alliance to accelerate the digital transformation of our country.
As a part of this alliance, while Jio sets up a network of large world-class data centers across India, Microsoft will bring its Azure cloud platform into Jio's data centers. When we put these two pieces together, we now have the capability to develop truly India-native solutions, including speech recognition and natural language understanding for all major Indian languages and dialects. All Indian businesses now have the capacity to accelerate their digital transformation and become globally competitive. On this very important occasion, I want to welcome in our midst a very special guest to talk about our partnership. My dear friend and the CEO of Microsoft, India's own Satya Nadella.
Thank you very much, Mukesh. It's such an incredible time to embark upon this partnership together. Today, digital technology is transforming every place, every industry, everything. This rapid change is being driven by massive technology shifts across the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge. Computing is becoming ubiquitous and distributed. AI is being infused in every experience. The interaction model itself with computers is increasingly human first rather than device first. These advances are shaping the next phase of innovation, creating new opportunities for people and organizations everywhere, especially in India. At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Core to this mission is deep partnerships like the one we are announcing today with Jio. Our ambition is to help millions of organizations across India thrive and grow in this era of rapid technological change.
Our long-term partnership combines the power of Azure AI, and Office 365 with Jio's connectivity and digital solutions, which are amongst the most used and fast-growing in the world. Together, we'll offer a comprehensive technology solution from compute to storage to connectivity and productivity for small and medium-sized businesses everywhere in the country. Jio and Microsoft will partner to launch new cloud data centers in India, ensuring more of Jio's customers can access the tools and platforms they need to build their own digital capability. Jio and Microsoft will jointly offer Office 365 so more organizations can empower their employees with a modern workplace. Jio and Microsoft will bring Azure Cognitive Services to more devices, creating new breakthrough intelligent experiences with the support of major Indian languages. At Microsoft, we don't celebrate technology for technology's sake.
We celebrate what others can do with technology. Our ambition is to make all these solutions broadly accessible and affordable so that they can reach as many people and organizations in India as possible. I'm excited to see how customers will be able to achieve more because of this partnership. I'm excited about our collective opportunity ahead. Thank you all so very much.
Thank you, Satya. With Microsoft and Jio, Indian businesses can count on a partnership that will work shoulder to shoulder with them in their journey towards becoming digital enterprises of the future. Anant Maheshwari, President of Microsoft India, is here with us today. Anant, let us make this happen for India. Friends, to further our connectivity vision of empowering digital enterprises of the future, today, I want to make two special announcements for startups and small and medium businesses. First, Jio is a startup built in India for India by Indians, and we have a very special place in our hearts for startups. You may know that 80% of the cost of running a startup goes towards cloud and connectivity infrastructure. I want to announce today that Jio is ready to take away this cost by making the connectivity and cloud infrastructure absolutely free for budding startups.
I urge all startups to register for their custom design package on jio.com. This service will be available from 1st January 2020 is our intention. Jio will also invest and financially support those startups that have the potential to address India's big needs in agriculture, healthcare, education, and skill development, which will boost the creation of new livelihoods. Second, micro, small, and medium businesses are the bedrock of Indian economy. To run their businesses on a bundle of connectivity, productivity, and automation tools costs a micro and a small enterprise between INR 15,000 and INR 20,000 a month currently. For a similar service, customers abroad pay over $1,000 per month. Today, we are taking the bold step of giving these applications along with our connectivity to small businesses for 1/10 the cost. That is starting at only INR 1,500 per month.
All small businesses will have access to unlimited enterprise-grade voice and data services, video conferencing, security solutions, marketing and sales solutions and all the Microsoft productivity tools that will help them run their businesses efficiently and at par with larger enterprises. The medium and larger businesses spend even higher between INR 3 lakhs and INR 5 lakhs per month for which we have custom design plans with similar value benefits. With this step, I am certain that the 2 million - 5 million micro, small, and medium enterprises will propel towards prosperity and march towards creating a new Digital India. Friends, we are at what I call the end of the beginning of the Jio story. We have built a robust connectivity business, our first pillar with multiple growth engines that provide significant upsides.
Our second pillar, digital platform, is Jio's contribution to transform India into an artificial intelligence-first economy across all sectors and all walks of life. It is my passion and conviction that the new India will lead and not follow the advanced nations of the world in adopting, even creating disruptive technologies that will decide the winners and the losers of the fourth industrial revolution. Dear shareholders, let me now talk about our next consumer business, our retail business. I'm proud to say that Reliance Retail has well and truly brought the retail revolution to India. We are able to deliver the highest value to our customers because we have the widest geographical footprint, nationwide supply chain, technology expertise, design and product development, and the largest assortment of goods and services.
Reliance Retail provides us with a hyper-growth platform as the Indian consumer demands products and services which are at par with the best in the world. It is the best proxy for the consumption story of India. We achieved a significant milestone with our turnover crossing INR 130,000 crores in the last year. We have achieved this milestone faster than any other retail company in the world. Our EBITDA margins are amongst the best globally. The retail business has grown phenomenally, registering a seven-fold increase in revenue and a 14-fold increase in profit in the last six years. Our relentless focus on operating discipline has resulted in a three-fold rise in per store productivity in the last five years. We serve more than 1 lakh customers every hour. A feat no Indian retailer has been able to achieve.
Last year, we delighted over INR 15 crore unique customers. We registered over INR 500 million footfalls becoming India's preferred shopping destination. We have expanded our footprint at the rate of eight stores per day, opening a total of 3,000 new stores this last year, higher than any other retailer globally. Our spread of stores covers all corners of our country, with presence in nearly 7,000 towns and cities. Over 2/3 of our 10,415 stores are in tier 2, tier 3, and tier 4 towns. These towns are connected with modern supply chain capable of delivering products from distribution centers spread across the country. The unique customer insights can be leveraged to grow this into a much bigger business in the next five years. Dear shareholders, here are a few signposts of our spectacular achievements in retail.
Reliance Digital is the undisputed leader in India in consumer electronics retailing. We sell more phones, laptops, refrigerators, TVs, and ACs than any other retailer in the country. Last year, we sold a TV every 24 seconds, and we sold a phone every two seconds. In grocery, we are India's largest modern trade retailer. Reliance Retail sells nearly half of the fresh fruits and vegetables sold by the entire modern retail ecosystem in India. We sold more than 6.4 lakh tons of groceries during the year. In the fashion category, Reliance Trends is the undisputed leader. Reliance Trends sold over 4 lakh garments every day last year. With the acquisition of Hamleys, Reliance Retail has transformed into a global retailer with presence in 18 countries.
We are proud to own a global leader in the children's premium toys category that we can take to other parts of the world. We will be the first Indian company to do so. We continue to be the preferred partner for several international marquee brands in India. Today, we are the only Indian retailer to be ranked in the global 100 top retailers. Over the next five years, our aim is to be amongst the world's top 20 retailers. Dear shareholders, now I want to update you on Reliance's New Commerce Initiative that I spoke about last year. New Commerce is a massive new business opportunity of the size of $700 billion. However, for Reliance, it is the greatest opportunity to promote inclusive growth and shared wealth at the bottom of India's commerce and retail pyramid.
The main purpose of new commerce is to completely transform the unorganized retail market, which accounts for 90% of India's retail industry. The 3 crore merchants and kirana shop owners who generate direct and indirect livelihoods for over 20 crore people form the backbone of India's commerce ecosystem. These highly energetic and self-motivated entrepreneurs have suffered in recent years because of their inability to invest in technology and infrastructure. In the true Reliance ethos, we are working towards enriching and empowering them with our end-to-end digital and physical distribution stack. For this, we are deploying blockchain, IoT, AI, and other new technologies on a pan-India basis. This tech-enabled partnership will link producers, traders, small merchants, consumer brands, and consumers. By removing inefficiencies and value destruction in today's market ecosystem, new commerce will transfer significant new value to consumers, producers, and merchants.
Our merchant point-of-sale solution, the Jio Prime Partner POS, is integral to our plan to create an ecosystem around small merchants. This user-friendly digital platform is designed for inventory management, customer relationship management, financial services, and a host of other services. This will modernize even the smallest neighborhood Kirana shop to become a future-ready digitized store. During the last year, we have made significant progress in developing and testing our merchant technology platforms. Our beta trials with thousands of merchants across multiple locations in our country established the premise of new commerce with significant increase in sales and improvements in margins of the participating merchants. We are now getting ready to roll out the platform at a larger scale. Reliance's new commerce platform thus represents the digital symbiosis of big and small enterprise. I believe that small must not only survive but also thrive in this new India.
Let me now turn to our media and entertainment business. We have created one of India's largest broadcast portfolios and digital media offerings across platforms. Our 72 television channels reach 800 million Indians, representing more than 95% of the TV viewing universe. Our News18-branded TV news platform is the largest by regional footprint, ratings, or revenue. Our entertainment portfolio, led by Colors, has grown in stature with its mass and niche offerings. Network18 is among the top digital media players in the country, with one in four Indians on our websites or apps across Moneycontrol, Firstpost, Voot, News18.com, and many others. Dear shareholders, Reliance Foundation's aim is to help change lives and empower India by providing the largest platform for developmental initiatives. As the foundation enters its 10th year, I am humbled that we have touched the lives of more than 29 million people across the country.
I would like to warmly congratulate Nita for her leadership in building India's largest philanthropic organization. Through our rural transformation programs, we have improved the livelihoods of over 8 million people across 19,000 villages. Our efforts in rural India support key national priorities like ensuring water security and doubling farmers' income using technology innovations. Last year, our foundation provided relief and rehabilitation to people impacted by natural calamities in Kerala, Andhra, and Odisha. As we speak, our teams are involved in relief and rehabilitation efforts in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Kerala in the ongoing floods. As a mark of respect to the Pulwama martyrs, we have assumed full responsibility for the education of their children and the livelihood of their families.
Responding to our honorable Prime Minister's appeal, we stand committed to support the people of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in all their developmental needs. Reliance will create a special task force, and you will see a lot of announcements on Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh in our developmental initiatives in the coming months. Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital continues to deliver excellent results in patient care in our own city, Mumbai. Last year, clinical capabilities in newer areas were developed in collaborations with doctors from Sloan Kettering, Gleneagles in Singapore and Guy's Hospital in London. Innovative new programs in liver transplant and pediatric cardiovascular surgeries were initiated for the first time in Mumbai. Reliance has received a letter of intent from the government to set up Jio Institute under the Institute of Eminence framework.
This will be one of the largest research universities, and we are committed to make this a world-class institute for higher education and research. Our education and sports for all initiatives have reached more than 18 million youth across multiple sporting disciplines. I would also like to congratulate Nita and Akash for their leadership for Mumbai Indians. Their winning the fourth title always brings smiles to all of us in the Reliance family. I believe we are the only team to do so. Our foundation aspires to make a greater impact on the nation through partnerships, digital technology and direct action. I seek your blessings, dear shareholders, to make this happen. Let me now summarize the value creation roadmap for your company as we are coming to the end of our largest capital expenditure cycle.
Your company has invested INR 5.4 lakh crore in the last five years for, A, expanding and strengthening a world-class oil-to-chemicals business, which has a unique combination of scale, complexity and resilience to business cycles. Our oil-to-chemicals business in partnership with Saudi Aramco, is best placed to pursue growth and value creation while adding substantial value to the feedstock provided by our strategic partner. B, in creating the world's largest converged greenfield legacy-free data network company and digital services company. Jio has grown into the proxy for tech and digital services for India. It has strong operating leverage and is best placed to win in the emerging INR 5 lakh crore Indian digital opportunity. C, building the largest and fastest growing retail company in India. Reliance Retail has created an unbeatable pole position in the INR 80 billion organized retail market in India.
In addition, Reliance Retail has built the capabilities to address the 700 billion unorganized retail opportunity, which we call new commerce. This is a unique business model we are building in partnership with millions of small merchants and Kirana shops, so that they can be empowered to serve Indian customers. Together, Reliance Retail and new commerce will become the proxy to India's consumption story. The India-centric upstream business in partnership with BP will bring over three TCF of gas resources to production starting next year. This will generate EBITDA in excess of $1 billion a year for over a decade. We also have large and valuable real estate assets and have a strong portfolio of financial investments.
Your company has thus built a unique portfolio of world-class and extremely valuable assets in the fastest growing economy in the world, India. Each of our best-in-class business is contributing to the transformation of our country while also creating enormous societal value. At the end of our largest capital expenditure cycle, we continue to be rated AAA for domestic debt and two notches above the sovereign rating for our international debt. These are the highest ratings for any industrial company in India. Our consolidated EBITDA last year was INR 92,656 crores. On the strength of our existing and new growth engines, I am very confident that we can grow this by 15% annually over the next five years.
Dear shareholders, last year, we transferred our telecom infrastructure assets to two separate infrastructure trusts for a consideration of INR 1.25 lakh crore with the intention of raising this money from large global institutional investors. We have received strong interest and commitments from reputed global investors and are confident that these transactions will be completed by the end of this financial year. Post this, we ended the last year with a net debt of INR 154,478 crore. We have a very clear roadmap to becoming a zero net debt company within the next 18 months, that is by 31st March 2029. Our transactions with Saudi Aramco and BP will create win-win relationships, generating significant strategic value for our partners. We expect to complete these transactions within this financial year. The commitments from these two transactions are about INR 1.1 lakh crore.
We have received strong interest from strategic and financial investors in our consumer businesses, Jio and Reliance Retail. We will induct leading global partners in these businesses in the next few quarters and move towards listing of both these companies within the next five years. We will also evaluate value-unlocking opportunities for our real estate and financial investments. With these initiatives, I have no doubt that your company will have one of the strongest balance sheets, not only in India, but in the world. As we achieve our zero net debt target, I assure you, my dear shareholders, that you will be rewarded abundantly through higher dividends, periodic bonus issues and other means at a more accelerated pace than any time in our history. Friends, in conclusion, I also wish to address my dear countrymen because they are the biggest and most important stakeholders of Reliance.
My father, Dhirubhai Ambani, created Reliance because his primary motivation was to create wealth and value for India and her people. He was absolutely clear in his vision that promoters, shareholders, and employees would get their share of value only after our businesses have created maximum societal value. This is also my vision, and it will remain the unchanging vision of Reliance. The trust and confidence of the people of India in Reliance is growing stronger with each passing year because we have remained faithful to our founder, Dhirubhai's vision and core values. This relationship of trust is our most precious asset. A single example is enough to illustrate this truth. In just three years, as many as 34 crore Indians have put their trust in Jio because of our uncompromising commitment to propel India to digital leadership.
Nothing gives me greater happiness than to see that Reliance is now making a bigger and more positive impact on the lives of more Indians in multiple ways through business and philanthropy. Nothing gives me greater inspiration in my work each single day than my conviction that the new India that our children will grow up in will be happier, healthier, wealthier, prouder, and even more caring than ever before. I would like to thank the central and the state government, our dear shareholders, investors, lenders, suppliers, and customers for their consistent and resolute support. I thank all my colleagues on the board for their unanimous support and immense encouragement. I have special words to acknowledge the collective efforts of the entire Reliance team working tirelessly to create and sustain this world-class enterprise and institution of Reliance. Thank you.