By Erick Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) had its 48th Annual General Meeting yesterday, and it’s pretty clear this industry conglomerate is becoming a…. tech conglomerate. Just see the number of tech related announcements:
- RIL introduced JioFrames, AI-powered smart glasses that rival the likes of Meta’s RayBans. Jio Frames will allow users to take HD photos, record videos or go live while all the data gets instantly stored on Jio’s AI cloud. However there’s no timeline for launch.
- RIL incorporates a new AI subsidiary called ‘Reliance Intelligence’ (move over Apple Intelligence!). Well, Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the company’s plans to incorporate a wholly owned AI subsidiary, Reliance Intelligence. The subsidiary will build gigawatt scale AI data centres (apparently ‘four times the size of a Tesla giga factory’), for which work has already begun in Jamnagar.
- For this ‘RI’ subsidiary, RIL also announced a partnership with tech giant Google to build “world class assets and execute at India scale with Google’s leading cloud and AI technology”, Mukesh Ambani said. Google will collaborate with Reliance to establish a dedicated Jio Cloud region in India, combining Reliance’s infrastructure with Google’s AI and cloud technologies. Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the initiative will “help shape the next leap with AI” and bring advanced compute power closer to Indian developers, startups and enterprises.
- Reliance also announced an AI-focused joint venture with Meta to combine open-source AI models with Reliance’s scale and industry expertise. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the partnership will deliver “personal superintelligence” tools and provide businesses across India access to its Llama family of AI models.
- The company plans to launch a mega battery manufacturing plant by 2026, build a solar power project larger than Singapore, and achieve 3 million tonnes of green hydrogen capacity by 2032. A ‘fully integrated green energy platform’ in Gujarat.
- Reliance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of RIL, is building a state-of-the-art 2,000-bed medical city in the heart of Mumbai, making it one of India’s most ambitious private healthcare infrastructure projects. The hospital will use…. AI. That’s what she (Nita Ambani) said.
Something that was not announced at the AGM but was in the news a couple of days earlier, Apple has joined hands with Reliance Jio in India to roll out Rich Communication Services (RCS) on iPhones. This bridges the color gap between the green bubble and blue bubble story. Although, I doubt most of us will move away from WhatsApp.
Now you may be cool, but are you so cool that you announce deals with Apple, Google and Meta in a couple of days?! Of course you aren’t. No one else is. Sigh.
Btw, Jio is still not a listed company. Ambani said that Jio is preparing for its IPO in the first half of 2026, not the first time he said that though. But you know who’s going in for an IPO? Growww! Well, the SEBI just gave the green light to Growww’s IPO filing. Also, OYO is filing its IPO papers in November, or so the company says.
Here’s other non-Reliance related news so that you can stay informed about tech in India:
- Japan and India are reportedly moving forward with plans to transfer production of older semiconductor and LCD screen technologies to India, as both nations seek to reduce their dependence on Chinese manufacturing and strengthen economic security cooperation.
- TVS Motor has launched a new escooter, TVS Orbiter, at an ex-showroom price of ₹99,900/-. The escooter comes with a 3.1 kWh battery, range of 158 km, and a bootspace of 34 litres.
- Flipkart launches a premium membership program, called ‘Flipkart Black’, priced at ₹1,499/- per year. Similar to Amazon Prime, I guess, without the movies?
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the first of the two major projects at the Suzuki Motor Plant in Hansalpur, Gujarat. This includes the flag off of the first unit of the Maruti Suzuki e-Vitara to be rolled off the production line. It will be followed by the inauguration of the first plant to produce hybrid battery electrodes.
- OpenAI has announced that it will distribute five lakh free ChatGPT Plus accounts in India, marking one of its biggest education-focused initiatives so far. The move will see teachers and students across the country gain access to the AI platform over the next six months.
- Trump tells Google and Microsoft to stop hiring Indians. I guess he forgot where these companies’ CEOs come from. LOL.
Trump’s tariffs are at 50% for India now. Yeah yeah. I’m more excited about PM Modi’s visit to Japan and then to China. Screw the US market, if I may say so myself.
To wrap up this week’s roundup, I want to talk about the Pixel 10 lineup’s price in India. The Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL are launching at ₹79,999/-, ₹1,09,999/- and ₹1,24,999/- respectively. That’s still more than their launch prices in the US, something I have always complained about (“why aren’t made in India phones coming at made in India prices”). But there is hope – rumors are that if a certain Bill gets passed, GST on electronics will fall from 28% to 5% (in some cases 10%) respectively. That’s a difference of ₹5,000/- at least on most high end phones. It’s something at least.
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