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It was a relatively low-profile announcement by Reliance Industries Limited this year, contrary to the usual buzz around the annual financial performance report. However, the Mukesh-Ambani led conglomerate showed strong performance thanks to growth in its digital and retail verticals. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) reported a 26.2% year-on-year (YoY) rise in its consolidated net profit for financial year 2021-22 (FY22) at INR 67,845 Cr.

Reliance Industries’ revenue grew 47% YoY to INR 7.92 Lakh Cr in FY22. For the first time, the annual revenue from its digital services business crossed the INR 1 Lakh Cr mark in FY22. The company’s digital arm also saw record high annual earnings of INR 40,268 Cr during the year. RIL said that the annual revenue for the retail business reached nearly INR 2 Lakh Cr in the financial year ending March 2022.

Besides the financial highlights, there were some interesting updates for many of Reliance’s key verticals. From the telco’s plans for 5G and the growth of JioFiber, to how its digital commerce platforms have grown, here are the highlights from the Reliance annual FY22 financial and operating performance report.

Jio Loses Subscribers In 2021-22

Jio Platforms, the digital services subsidiary of RIL which is the parent company for Reliance Jio, reported a 17.1% growth in gross revenue for FY22 at INR 95,804 Cr, while net profit rose 23.6% to INR 15,487 Cr.

Jio Platforms’ EBITDA grew 20.9% to INR 39,112 Cr during FY22. On a quarterly basis, Jio Platforms’ net profit increased 22.9% YoY to Rs INR 4,313 Cr during the quarter ended March 2022, while gross revenue rose 20.7% to INR 26,139 Cr during the quarter. EBITDA grew 27.4% to INR 10,918 Cr during the January-March quarter.

Jio announced that its total customer base as on March 31, 2022 had reached 410.2 Mn. Gross subscriber addition for the quarter was 35.5 Mn across the mobility and broadband businesses. The total subscriber base is lower than than 435 Mn the company had reported last year.

Reliance Jio Platforms recorded data traffic of 24.6 Bn GB during Q4 FY22, a 47.5% growth over the same period last year.

Digital Commerce Growth

Reliance claimed the retail unit’s digital commerce revenue saw major growth as daily orders saw 2X growth year-on-year.“In New Commerce, the business continued to partner with new merchants across geographies and consumption baskets. The merchant partner base grew three times over last year,” the Ambani-led company said.

JioMart has strengthened its subscription model through the integration of Milkbasket with daily orders growing by 100% as compared to last year, the company claimed.

Reliance also claimed that its online fashion platform AJIO is currently seeing nearly two-thirds of all orders from Tier 3 & below towns. “The business expanded its merchant partner base in over 3,500 towns with over 3.5x growth in revenues over last year,” the company added.

During the quarter, Reliance Retail acquired Clovia, a leading women’s intimate wear brand to bolster its lingerie brand portfolio. Further, it also acquired stake in Indian designer wear brands – AK-OK, Abraham & Thakore, Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla and formed a joint venture for a new brand with Rahul Mishra during the quarter.

JioFiber & 5G PLans

Reliance announced that Jio has finished conducting 5G field trials across eight states for M-MIMO, Macro, Outdoor & Indoor Small Cell solutions. “Peak user throughput achieved was over 1.5Gbps in these trials. Multi-vendor interoperability and interworking has also been verified,” RIL said.

Further, JioFiber is now the largest broadband provider in India within two years of launch. The service is said to be installed at 6 Mn premises. Jio consumers have over five hours of average daily engagement on the set-top-box, the company claimed.

The company claimed that the overall ARPU for Jio’s broadband and mobility services improved to INR 167.6 led by the tariff hike, better subscriber mix and ramp-up of the JioFiber FTTH services.

Retail Growth Story 

As for the retail business, Reliance claims to have crossed the 15K benchmark, with a total of 15,196 stores and 2,566 stores added during the year. The total retail area under operation grew to 41.6 Mn sq ft. Further, it added a record 15,000 new jobs which took its total staff count to over 361K.

During the year, “business continued to attract more and more customers across the country through its wide portfolio of stores and digital commerce platforms with registered customer base growing to 19.3 crore, up 24 per cent y-o-y”, it said.

For the quarter ended 31st March, RRL reported its best ever quarterly revenue at INR 58,017 Cr gross revenue, 23.3% higher than last year. While its revenue from operations stood at INR 50,834 Cr or 23.1% higher from INR 41,296 Cr. According to the company, the headwinds posed by the COVID situation in January were offset by the robust growth in February and March 2022.

New Energy Roadmap

“We are forging ahead with the development of our New Energy Giga Factories complex across 5,000 acres in Jamnagar. And with the strong global partnerships we have, I am confident that Reliance will create sustainable and affordable new energy solutions for India to help her meet growing energy needs, while ensuring that we achieve our ambitious target of Net Carbon Zero by 2035,” Ambani said.

As per reports earlier this month, RIL is looking to build a mega land bank to set up renewable energy parks and projects. The company is conducting land aggregation to set up solar power projects of 100GW by 2030 in line with its INR 75,000 Cr push into clean energy till 2024.