I, 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. 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 3 major growth engines in one single corporate entity: our Oil to Chemicals division, Jio and ReThink. All 3 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 2 consumer businesses had been separately listed companies, each would be ranked among the top 10 in India in terms of value. Jio crossed the 340,000,000 subscriber mark to remain. Jio crossed the 340,000,000 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 4x larger than the 2nd largest retail player and it is larger than all other major retailers put together. Our 2 consumer businesses now collectively contribute nearly 32% to the consolidated EBITDA, up from 2% 5 years ago.
The day is not far when their share would be 50% of our overall EBITDA. The 3rd 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 2 lakh 24,391 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 5 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, Sri Narendra Modi, has set the goal of making India a $5,000,000,000,000 economy by 2024. I fully endorse this ambitious goal. Indeed, I can clearly see India becoming a $10,000,000,000,000 economy by 2,030 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 in equity. 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. As 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 520041 crores. Reliance and BP signed a joint venture agreement in petroleum retailing business.
In this initiative, BP is acquiring 49% stake in our petro retail business. Reliance will get INR 7,000 crores 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, Sadi Aramco will invest in Reliance for a 20% stake in our Oil to Chemicals division at an enterprise value of $75,000,000,000 or over 5.3 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 chain. Saudi Aramco will also supply 500,000 barrels a day of crude oil on a long term basis to RIL's Jamnaga 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 Jamnaga refinery has been processing Saudi oil every single day for 20 years.
Now we have transformed our long standing relationship of 2 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, Sri 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 deemphasizing its shale gas business in the U.
S, we are currently focused only on India. In our coal paid 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 3,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of discovered gas resources in the KGD-six block. Our JV has committed an investment of INR 35,000 crores in the 3 deepwater 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 twenty twenty with an expected peak production of 1,000,000,000 cubic feet 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 $2,500,000,000,000 economy. Statistics from large economies show that nearly 3% to 5% of their GDP is spent on digital services.
Even at 3%, this translates to a potential Indian digital services spend of nearly lakh crores annually. And 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 2 pillars. The first was digital connectivity, where Jio would connect everyone, every place and everything with the highest quality and affordability. And 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 3 years old and what an incredible 3 years it has been. In the sacred Upanishads, we have the famous mantra, 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 340,000,000 users and still we are signing up more than 10,000,000 new customers every month.
The potential for growth is immense and 500,000,000 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 2nd largest operator in the world in a
single country.
Dear shareholders, your company has invested nearly 3.5 lakh crores towards creating a state of the art digital infrastructure across India with largest optical fiber footprint, and recently we have divested about 1.25 lakh crores of hard infrastructure into separate Infrastructure Investment Trusts or INVINVIX 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 5 gs ready today. And because of our early adoption of ongoing enhancements to LTE technology, our wireless Tectonic network is already 4 gs plus and we can upgrade this to 5 gs 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 per Jio, namely mobile broadband.
Even with one engine, Jio has been profitable from its Q1 of commercial operations. And now we are ready to kick start 4 more engines of connectivity revenue for Jio, and they are: 1st, Internet of Things or IoT for all over India 2nd, home broadband services 3rd, enterprise broadband services and 4th, broadband for small and medium businesses. And I am 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 4 gs network called Narrowbed 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 300,000,000 electricity meters, which need to be connected digitally for real time monitoring and for giving consumers full visibility and control of cost and quality. And going forward, each home and business premise will have dozens of connected device. Within another 2 years, it is estimated that there will be more than 2,000,000,000 connected IoT devices in our country.
Jio aims to connect at least 1,000,000,000 of these on Jio's IoT platform, and this translates into a 20,000 crore per year revenue opportunity for Jio. Jio's IoT platform will be commercially available starting 1st January 2020. Now the 2nd 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 last year, we invited registrations of interest from across India so that we could prioritize GeoFiber rollout into localities with the highest interest.
The response was simply overwhelming. We received over 15,000,000 registrations from nearly 1600 towns. And based on these registrations, we have drawn up a plan to reach 20,000,000 residences and 15,000,000 business establishments in these 1600 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 JioFiber 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.
And we have found that these trial homes on an average are consuming more than 100 GBs 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, multiparty video conferencing, voice enabled virtual assistance, interactive gaming, home security and many other smart home solutions.
The digital possibilities are endless. And 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 states in 3 leading cable MSOs, Hathaway, DENN and GTPN, who have direct relationship with over 30,000 NCOs. 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 booking of high definition channels to customers with better features, reliability and customer experience better even than DTH. But now we have gone one step further. We have designed our JIOSET top box to accept the broadcast KBTV cable TV signals from our LCO partners, so that from now every Jio Fiber 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. Next, Jio Fiber 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 1 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. And 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. Jio Fiber 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 GeoFiber.
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, with JioFiber services, we'll show you that the future is truly here. Last year, we promised you ultra high internet speeds on JioFiber. Today, our speeds start at 100 Mbps and go all the way up to 1 GBPS.
And as we speak, more than 5 Black Rooms are testing Jio Fiber Internet and Voice Services, making it the largest beta program in India.
We've connected the Jio Fiber Services and the Jio sector box right here in this hall. Can we please have the TV on stage?
Can we also mirror the GeoCetra box onto the large screen, please? Thank you.
There we go. Let's try to run a speed test. And the speed test should be starting, and there we go.
Wow.
And 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 1 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.
And we have worked hard to make this feature even better. And 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 conference all from your home.
I'm going to connect 4 people at different locations using the Jio set top box and a USB camera attached to this TV?
Sir, I'm waiting to see your reaction.
Oh, wow. 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. So why don't you say hello?
Adam Douglas. Hi, everyone.
That's good. That's good. I can also see my friend who's currently in New Jersey, I think. He's my classmate from school, Subhasish. Hi, how are you Subhasish?
Looks like you're relaxing at home after a great weekend.
It looks like you guys are having way more fun out there.
Of course, of course. I've probably worked for Jio. And I can also see my old family friend, Patakji, who is always, I don't know, traveling somewhere or the other all the time. So 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, Yeah. This is a truly unique solution and this solution is unique because it's device agnostic. Kiran's family was connected at their home using our GeoSetter 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 with between devices, including the TV at your home. And best of all, you can video conference with anyone anywhere in the world for absolutely free.
Spending 1,000 of rupees on video conferencing setups are now history. Plus, 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, and this will bring your loved ones even closer to you than ever before.
Let's now talk a little bit about the Jio Setup 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 1st 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, Karun. And I'm 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.
So while Satash connects, let us tell you a little bit about the Jio Setup Box. First, the Jio Setup Box supports almost all gaming controllers and through a soft controller on your smartphone. 2nd, the gaming graphics on Jio Setup Box are at par with the best in the world. And 3rd, it also supports gameplay in 4 ks.
And 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. And the biggest highlight is that with GeoFiber, gamers will get a much desired zero latency gaming experience.
Perfect timing. I'm ready. I've selected Arsenal and Thorel 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 0 latency online gaming with anywhere in India and the graphics card that we have enjoyed. I'm going to try and score a goal as soon as I can.
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. And then we have mixed reality or MR, which is a hybrid of AR and VR. JioFiber 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 3 specific use cases: shopping, education and entertainment. Let's wear our MR headsets.
Can we also have one of our headsets mirrored on the screen, please, so the audience can see what we are viewing? To begin with, let's bring on to state some of the flows Arakash would like to shop for, perhaps formalwear.
Isha, online shopping always leaves me a bit confused. I never know how it will actually fit or what color will really look like, but today we have something truly game changing, a 3 d hologram that Jio has developed in our own MR lab. Let me load my hologram to show just one such use case today. I can finally see which shirt color suits me best and which one I know we'll select. Maybe not this green one, maybe loan, 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 I'll deliver home soon. There we go.
And there we go. The shirt is in the car.
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 Geo 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. And 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 Chandra Yayana 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. But as we can see using this incredibly powerful visual aid, the distance is not a straight path. This spaceship actually curves around the planet. So calculating this would be slightly more complex. But it becomes too 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. So let us give a big round of applause to ISRO's all women team of Chandra
Guys, that reminds me, did you know that the amount of fiber laid by Jio can actually circle the earth 11 times?
That's incredible. And this technology and content is powered by yet another startup that Jio has invested in, Embyze, an early AI powered learning platform. Now let us move to the 3rd 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, me play one of the most popular movies that we have from Jio cinema. So, Isha, what do you think?
It's great. But what would make it even more captivating is if we could have the experience of a theater side
screen. Wait a second, you said 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.
It's like you're sitting in a real cinema hall, isn't it?
Unbelievable. And there's so much more to show you, but this brings us to the end of our demos for today. So we can finally take our headsets off.
Now this mixed reality device that you are seeing is called the Jio Holoboard and it is made by Tesserect, which is one of the startups that Jio has invested in. It will be available for purchase in the market very soon and at an extremely affordable price.
We hope you enjoy 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 GeoFiber Services. As always, we will continue working hard to bring more and more amazing services to your home and take GeoFiber to the next level. Thank you very much today. Now let me invite our Chairman back onto the stage.
Thank you, Isha, Akash and Kiran. That was phenomenal. And 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 GeoFiber going to be available and how much will it cost? Today, I want to announce that starting 5th September, on the 3rd 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 GeoFiber tariffs. GeoFiber tariffs are based on 4 strong and powerful principles. First, GeoFiber 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 megabits per second. And in India, even the most basic GeoFiber plants will start with 100 Mbps at the lowest time. And we will have plans to go all the way to 1 GBPS or 1,000 Mbps. So 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. And on price, we are pricing our plans at less than oneten the global rates to make it accessible for all Indian homes. GeoFiber plants will be priced between INR700 to INR 10000 a month to suit every budget and every need and every segment.
2nd,
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 2 initiatives. 1st, the default tariffs on your Jio Home Phone will be 1 5th to 1 10th of the existing industry tariffs. 2nd, we are announcing an unlimited international calling pack at only INR500 per month in the U.
S. And Canada, thereby making it easy for families to connect. 3rd, 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 GeoFiber plants will come bundled with subscriptions to most leading premium OTT applications. Also for the first time in India, we are introducing a disruptive concept of watching new movies. Premium GeoFiber customers We call this Jio, 1st day for show. We plan to launch this service in the middle of 2020. 4th, we are launching a special mobility service for our Jio Fiber users called Jio Postpaid Plus to deliver a platinum grade service and product experience.
Some of the unique features of this service are: 1, it will be India's 1st 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. 2nd, seamless data and voice connectivity across all your devices, both at home and outside. 3rd, unprecedented family plans, one data plan for better control on all GBs and sharing with all members of your family. 4th, international roaming at a fraction of a cost with superior service experience. 5th, phone upgrades at preferential rates.
And 6th, all your home solutions on the screen of your phone available to you 20 fourseven. The complete details of our tariffs will be available from 5th September 2019 on geo.com and myjio application. But as usual, there is one more thing. The experience of JioFiber and JioSet Top Box really comes to life when combined with an LED television. So Jio Fiber customers who opt for our annual plans, which we call Jio Forever plans, will get an HD of 4 ks LED television and a 4 ks set top box absolutely free.
We are calling this the GeoFiber Welcome Offer. I invite all of you to make the most of the Jio Welcome Offer and sign up for Jio Fiber as soon as it is available in your neighborhoods. Friends, let me now move to the 2nd 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 geod and a and developed unique capabilities in their respective fields with a total of 1500 talented engineers. This is yet another way we are building talent. And 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.
1st, 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. And 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 1. 2nd, 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 100 of millions of users requires a well integrated solution spanning connectivity, data storage and real time computing.
And 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. And India and its 1600 cities will be amongst the first in the world for Indian residences to experience mixed reality and augmented reality and virtual reality on GeoFiber. And 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. And today, I'm 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 GL's data centers. When we put these two pieces together, we now have the capability to develop truly Indian 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 technology shifts across the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge. Computing is becoming ubiquitous and distributed. AI is being infused in every experience.
And 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, 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. And 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. And 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, and 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. So, 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 2 special announcements for start ups and small and medium businesses.
1st, Jio is a start up 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 start up 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 start ups. I urge all startups to register for their custom designed package on geo.com, and 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, health care, education and skill development, which will boost the creation of new livelihoods. 2nd, 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 INR15,000 INR20,000 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 onetenth the cost Now 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 3 and 5 lakhs per month for which we have custom designed plans with similar value benefits. With this step, I am certain that the 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 micro, small and medium enterprises will propel towards prosperity and march towards creating a new digital India.
Credits,
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 upside. And our 2nd pillar, digital platform, is Jio's contribution to transform India into an artificial intelligence first economic 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 4th 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 7 fold increase in revenue and a 14 fold increase in profit in the last 6 years. Our relentless focus on operating discipline has resulted in a threefold rise in per store productivity in the last 5 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 15 crore unique customers. We registered over 500,000,000 footfalls becoming India's preferred shopping destination. We have expanded our footprint at the rate of 8 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 thirds 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 5 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 2 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 Hemleys, 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 and we will be the 1st Indian company to do so. And 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 over the next 5 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 US700 $1,000,000,000 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 1 of India's largest broadcast portfolios and digital media offerings across platforms.
Our 72 television channels reach 800,000,000 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. Network 18 is among the top digital media players in the country with 1 in 4 Indians on our websites or apps across Moneycontrol, First Post, Boot, News18 dotcom 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 29,000,000 people across the country. I would like to warmly congratulate Neeta for her leadership. I would like to warmly congratulate Geeta for her leadership in building India's largest philanthropic organization. Through our rural transformation programs, we have improved the livelihoods of over 8,000,000 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 Karel, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. 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, the appeal, we stand committed to support the people of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in all their developmental needs and Reliance will create a special task force, and you will see a lot of announcements on Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and our developmental initiatives in the coming months. Sir, HN 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 GEO 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 18,000,000 youth across multiple sporting disciplines.
I would also like to congratulate Neeta and Akash for their leadership for Mumbai Indians And their winning report 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 INR5.4 lakh crores in the last 5 years. Or, 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 rupees 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 80,000,000,000 dollars organized retail market in India. In addition, Reliance Retail has built the capabilities to address the $700,000,000,000 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 3 Tcf of gas resources to production starting next year.
This will generate EBITDA in excess of $1,000,000,000 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 cycle largest capital expenditure cycle, we continue to be rated AAA for domestic debt and 2 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 INR92,656 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 5 years. Dear shareholders, last year we transferred our telecom infrastructure assets to 2 separate infrastructure trusts for a consideration of INR 1.25 lakh crores 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 1,454,478 crores.
We have a very clear roadmap to becoming a 0 net debt company within the next 18 months that is by 31st March, 2021. Our transactions with Saudi Aramco and DP 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 1,100,000 gross. 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 5 years. We will also evaluate value unlocking opportunities for our real estate and financial investments. Not only in India, but in the world. As we achieve our 0 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 Ambali, created Reliance because his primary motivation was to create wealth and value for India and for 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 3 years, as many as 30 4 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. And 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.