By Dhwani Pandya
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani wants the group to pioneer artificial intelligence solutions for India’s urgent priorities including healthcare, education, agriculture and employment, the billionaire said on Thursday.
The 66-year-old said as Reliance reinvents itself to become a new age technology company it needs “to be at [the] forefront of using data, with AI as an enabler for achieving a quantum jump in productivity and efficiency.”
Mukesh has led the transformation of Reliance from a traditional energy and material business company into a technology company over the last decade with the launch of its telecom and digital services.
Reliance, which was started by Mukesh’s father Dhirubhai Ambani in 1957, now operates in telecoms, digital services, retail, oil and gas and new energy with a market value of more than $200 billion.
To supports its AI ambitions, in September Reliance signed a deal with U.S. chip firm Nvidia to develop cloud infrastructure and language models, as well as generative applications.
In his year-end address to employees on Thursday Mukesh urged them to bring AI-led transformation across the company’s key growth engines including digital services, retail, oil and chemical business as well as health and life science by 2024.
Also on Thursday, Reliance rival Adani Group said that it had formed a joint venture with a unit of Abu Dhabi-based International Holding Co. (IHC) for deployment AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain products. The joint venture aims to tap $175 billion India digitization opportunity.
(Reporting by Dhwani Pandya; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
