Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Industries Ltd’s has announced its plan to set up a new digital services firm to act as an umbrella platform for all the Reliance-owned Jio digital services, including MyJio, JioTV, and JioSaavn. The company’s board has approved to pump in Rs 1.08 lakh crore for the blockchain-based platform.
The new firm will fit between the parent company RIL and the subsidiary Reliance Jio and will assist the telecom company in becoming debt-free, according to the Indian billionaire.
Ambani, in a press release, said the new company would be paying direct attention to services in agriculture, commerce, education, healthcare, gaming, government-to-citizen services, and the manufacturing sector, among others. He also added that the new company would be a “transformational” and “disruptive” digital service platform.
The new umbrella platform will be backed by investment in emerging and next-gen technologies like blockchain, AI, and machine learning and will be enabled by virtual, augmented and mixed reality, computer vision, high performance and edge computing, natural language processing, and voice-enabled services.
The restructuring would assist RIL to transfer all its debt from Reliance Jio to the parent company, making Jio a debt-free company from March 2020. According to reports, with Reliance Jio’s debt-free status, RIL might also be looking at releasing its initial public offering.
In August, Ambani had announced the aim to make RIL net debt-free over the next 18 months during the 42nd Annual General Meeting. Currently, RIL and its subsidiaries hols a net debt of Rs 1.57 lakh crore as of 30th September 2019.
