Tenth Anniversary Special
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Corporate
Reliance: Reaching out
Raghuvir Srinivasan
Mr Anil Ambani
IT is a company that touches your life everyday in one way or another. Your suit or saree may be made of the polyester yarn produced by it, your car could be fuelled by petrol from its refinery, you could well be speaking or receiving a call through the mobile phone network run by the company... why, even the milk sachet lying at your doorstep every morning could be made from polyethylene produced at its plant. The company? Reliance Industries.
This monolith, with interests spanning oil and gas exploration, refining, petrochemicals, textiles and now, telecom, has seen explosive growth in the last decade. With a turnover in excess of Rs 65,000 crore, net profit of Rs 4,100 crore and an asset base of Rs 50,000 crore in 2002-03, Reliance today is a force to reckon with in Indian industry. The company's market share exceeds 80 per cent in the polymers and fibre/intermediates business.
Yet, despite all this, if Reliance is today not spoken about in the same league as, say, the Tata group, then it has something to do with the way the business was built up over the years. Reliance's business vision, conception and strategy were brilliant as was the pursuit of the latest in technology and practices.
Where Reliance differed from the rest was in the means adopted to reach the goal. The company was not averse to cutting corners within the legal framework, often testing the limits of rules and regulations. It mastered the art of "managing the environment", a pseudonym for influencing government policy in its favour. Of course, there are those who believe the company only did what it had to, to survive and grow in the control era.
That said, there is no denying the fact that the foundations of the company, as we now know it, were built using unorthodox methods. In the eternal battle between means and ends, if we agree that the end justifies the means, then we have to hand it to Reliance and the late Dhirubhai Ambani for building a truly remarkable, world-class company.
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