Already pretty big in the Indian context, India's number one corporate is steadily making its way into the big league at the global level too. Let’s just for a moment look at the phenomenal journey of Reliance Industries in the last 4 months and put things in context

Reliance’s market capitalization is now upward of Rs 14 lakh crore if you were to include the value of the partly paid shares as well. When the year started, there was a stiff race between Reliance and TCS for the numero uno position in terms of market capitalisation. As I write this, Reliance is now 75 percent higher than TCS and is actually equal to the market cap of TCS and HDFC Bank put together. Meaning, it is as big as the next two companies on the list of the most valuable firms by market cap.

Reliance's presence in the Nifty

Reliance’s weight in the Nifty is now at 16 percent

HDFC Bank is next at 10.5 percent, Infosys follows at 7.6 percent

And how much has Reliance contributed to the rally? Since the March lows, Nifty has rallied nearly 3600 points or 47 percent. Of this, Reliance alone has contributed 1025 points or nearly 28.5 percent of the entire upmove. In fact, such has been Reliance’s contribution, that it has matched the contribution of the next 4 big stocks

NIFTY CONTRIBUTION

Since March lows

Stock Points

Reliance 1025

Infosys 377

HDFC Bank 362

ICICI Bank 174

HDFC 130

This is also a global trend. Well known market guru Nilesh Shah tweeted this:

Polarization is visible across the world. pic.twitter.com/C4GbWsAPcE

— Nilesh Shah (@NileshShah68) July 23, 2020

In the S&P 500 in US, the 5 largest stocks have returned 35 percent while the rest 95 stocks have declined by early 5 percent. There is a saying that “Never let a crisis go to waste” So one thing is clear, in this pandemic, there have been few companies which have latched on to this crisis as an opportunity and Reliance is definitely one among those.

Now, this rally has also boosted Mukesh Ambani's ranking on the the global rich list. He has leapfrogged the likes of Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffet to reach the fifth spot with a networth of $77 bn. The man just above him?

Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg. Quite a coincidence, considering that the Facebook deal sparked off this rerating of Reliance.

Lastly, where does Reliance rank on the global scene? With this rally, Reliance has entered the top 50 club globally,overtaking the likes of Oracle and Exxon and in dollar terms has a market cap of roughly $190 billion. Now, this may sound big, but in the global context, it is still some distance away from the biggest of the big players. Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are all above $1.5 trillion and Google is above $1 trillion.

The famous Mani Ratnam movie Guru which is said to be loosely based on the life of Reliance founder late Mr Dhirubhai Ambani ends with the main protagonist asking the jubilant shareholders attending the AGM in a packed cricket stadium “Banna chahte ho duniya ki sabse badi company?”. Well while that may be too much of an ask in the foreseeable future, but still, it won’t come as a surprise if Reliance finds itself among at least the top 25 global names before long.

First Published:Jul 26, 2020 8:04 PM IST