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the-south-asian.com July / August 2006 |
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August/September Contents
Sufis - wisdom against 50
years of mountain Heritage cities:
Cotton - the fibre of
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Page
7 of 10 Telecom & Software - Trends & Future in South Asia
(cntd.) by
First published in
December 2001
Ambani’s - Reliance Infocom
Father Dhirubhai - high school dropout from Corwad, Junagadh district.
Son Mukesh,
Son Anil , a graduate of
the Wharton School of Business.
Value/ Wealth Created
about $ 7 - 20 billion .
The story of the Ambani
family is not simply a rags to richest story. With every project the Ambanis
have defied established wisdom and established the largest operations of its
kind . Starting from Reliance Textiles in 1980’s [ after a series of small
build-ups of the various chemicals involved in artificial fabrics - Reliance
In
1991, started its most
valuable project, at Hazira, the largest single multi-feed ethylene cracker
plant in the world. Hazira is a completely integrated world class plant,
manufacturing polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride
(PVC), polyester terephthalate (PET) and other intermediates like vinyl
chloride monomer, mono-ethene glycol and pure phthalic acid (PTA). The
Hazira plant gives Reliance 50 % of the Indian market .
They went through
building up the Oil Refinery at Jamnagar with its own crude oil port.
Reliance also is into Power Generation and Insurance.
Now the Reliance Infocom
project that will comprise the largest Broadband Infrastructure project in
India is being rolled out at a speed that leaves the competition from the
the others [ Bharti Mittal, SNL , BSNL, GAIL, SAIL , Indian Railways] far
behind.
As a group they
contribute about 5 % of the Indian Governments Revenue. What is more
surprising is that these projects were often started, completed and went
into production profitably against the studies the Ambanis got done by
foreign consultants. Also the speed of execution of these Mega projects have
been done are noteworthy -- the oil refinery was completed is 36 months
with a capital cost per ton about 30-50 % lower than other refineries in
Asia. The Ambanis' oil refinery accounts for about 25 % of the Indian
refining capacity. Ambanis' Reliance
After a stroke and a
heart attack laid the father to a more relaxed work schedule , Anil and
Mukesh have held the Ambanis' empire called Reliance together . Anil
handles Investments /Financial Markets [ both Indian & International ] and
Corporate Communications especially those involving foreign Companies .
Mukesh is the strong & silent type and hands-on can do business race horse.
Business Projects are meticulously studied and alternative investment
/capital raising projects are kept ready , should the need arise . As an
example , when Chidambaram the Finance Minister gave the approval for
Reliance Industries to post a 100 year bond in USA , it took about 3 hours
after that for the Ambanis to confirm that the Bond had been placed .
A
very human approach to people management is also the hallmark at Reliance .
From the 80,000 plus Construction workers at the Oil Refinery to executives
, only the best care is given. The best are identified and then brought into
the company.
Talking about the potential of the Indian software engineers , Mukesh Ambani
at a meeting of the Indian Chamber of Commerce said that an Indian engineer
can earn up to $20,000 annually ; if by 2020 India can produce about 50,000
engineers , then the potential income to India will be in Trillions of
Dollars.
The Bombay-based group
is in the midst of building a 60,000 km (37,500 miles) fibre-optic network
using IP technology, linking 115 Indian cities and towns in a drive to
become a fully-integrated firm spanning telephone, Internet and
entertainment. The network is expected to cost 250 billion rupees ($5.6
billion) to build. Reliance has entered the telecom industry because of
prospects for rapid growth in a market which has just over three phones for
every 100 people in a nation of one billion people. Technology research firm
Gartner expects India's fixed-line subscriber base to jump to 83 million by
2005 from about 30 million now.
Reliance Infocom has set
up the state of the art Data Center (IDC) in Navi Mumbai. This is the first
IDC set up by Reliance & soon to be followed at Bangalore & Delhi beside
other major cities. Reliance Data Center at Mumbai is connected to Internet
on E3 links and is shortly going to be connected on STM-1 line to Tier 1 ISP
at USA providing faster access to & from Internet for its customers and the
servers located at Data Center. All Reliance Data Centers will be
interconnected across country providing Disaster Recovery (DR) and host of
other value-added services including VPN connectivity, IDC in Reliance with
24 X 7 support and ensures that your site is up and running smoothly.
Several Indian companies
are creating bandwidth but they are behind Reliance Infocom's mega-project.
Reliance Infocom has been laying optical fiber cables at a speed of
approximately 100 kilometers per day, an impressive speed which other Indian
broadband companies have not been able to achieve. While most of Reliance’s
competition is laying 3 pairs of cables, Reliance is laying 8 pairs of
cables at 6 feet below ground level. It has laid over 10,000 kilometers of
ducts so far. By the end of 2002, RI would have used 80,000 kilometers of
HDPE pipes..
This project is expected
to support the growing demand for bandwidth by user industry sectors.
Increased availability and reliability of bandwidth is expected to further
increase business opportunities in computer services, value-added telecom
services, and entertainment services. RI's backbone will also support the
needs of India's ever-expanding Information Technology industry.
In Telecom, Reliance
provides cellular and basic telephony services. It has cellular licences for
seven circles in 13 states. It also has the basic telephony licence for
Gujarat state where it started in March 2000. It has covered 36 cities in
the first phase of cellular operations and its subscriber base is at 70,000
this year. It plans to expand its cellular coverage to over 90 cities.
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