Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani said in the company's annual report that India would emerge stronger from the COVID-19 pandemic with the help of collective efforts from all sectors.

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"The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted several lives and dealt a severe blow to the economic health. In these challenging times, the most remarkable and satisfying achievement of the company has been its humanitarian efforts and the war against COVID is far from over, we, the Reliance Family are confident that in the end we will prevail," Ambani said.

The oil-to-telecom major has achieved the highest pre-payment of debt undertaken by any corporate borrower in India. "Despite unprecedented challenges, we continued to execute on our growth plans across businesses. We achieved the highest ever pre-payment of debt undertaken by any corporate borrower in India. We have a strong balance-sheet and the high liquidity will support growth plans for our three hyper-growth engines – Jio, Retail and O2C," the RIL CMD explained.

Rapid scale-up of digital commerce solutions, including JioMart, compensated for curtailed store operations. With its next generation all-IP data network, Jio continued to revolutionise digital adoption and Jio's innovation has spearheaded the transformation of India.

The company has managed 100 percent O2C capacity utlilisation despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Reliance has initiated the proceedings of carving out its O2C businesses into a separate subsidiary and the process is expected to be completed in CY 2021.

O2C reorganisation creates an independent, global-scale growth engine for RIL, with a strong cash flow generation potential while facilitating value creation through strategic partnerships and attracting a dedicated pool of investor capital. Through the COVID-19 crisis, Reliance operated its O2C facilities at near 100 percent, by shifting products to export markets to sustain operating rates.

Scale economics along with strong competitive cost positions across the chain helped Reliance sustain positive contribution through this unprecedented phase, according to the company's annual report.

Severe demand destruction due to global lockdowns impacted O2C business. Flexibility in operations and agile response to changing market dynamics enabled operations at near-normal levels and deliver industry-leading results. Domestic demand has recovered sharply across the O2C business.

Reliance BP Mobility Ltd (RBML) is the first Oil Marketing Company (OMC) to get the approval of Mobile Dispensing Unit and the only OMC to use HDPE containers (non-metallic) for on demand delivery of fuel. With its services spanning across India, it is uncovering the latent needs of the non-transport sector, and meeting these needs with great efficiency, leading the way to market leadership in the non-transport sector.

While JioMart continues to grow in scale with more traffic, active users and orders, rapid scale-up of digital commerce solutions compensated for curtailed store operations and lower footfalls. Ajio.com witnessed 3x increase in biz on higher orders and improvement across all metrics.

Qualcomm and Jio successfully tested 5G solutions in India, achieving the 1 gbps milestone, earlier in the year.

The world is closing ranks for a strong global action on climate change and to accelerate new energy and new materials business for clean and green development and Reliance has set a target to become net carbon zero by 2035, and achieve best-in-class standards across environmental, social and governance (ESG), the annual report said.

Here are some key highlights from the annual report:

The Reliance R&D team designed a process to produce sanitisers aligned with WHO specifications at 20% of market cost.

The team is working with various CSIR labs to certify Nexar polymer, which has shown the ability to destroy the lipid layer of various viruses and bacteria.

Reliance developed novel cost effective diagnostic kits called ‘R-Green’ and ‘R-Green Pro’ for COVID-19 detection. The kits have received ICMR approval.

The Company submitted a proposal for the application of Niclosamide as a potential drug against COVID-19.

Reliance is working to address insufficient ventilator supply in emergency rooms across hospitals in India by deploying a concept developed in Italy, which enables CPAP machine with a 3D-printed charlotte valve and special snorkeling mask.

Reliance foresaw the significant rise in demand for onsite oxygen as the pandemic rages. It has started working on value-engineered robust design for oxygen generators capable of producing 5-7 litres of oxygen per minute with a purity of 90-95%.

(Disclosure: Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com, is controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.)

(Edited by : Jerome Anthony)

First Published:Jun 2, 2021 7:58 PM IST