NEW YORK (TIP): Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Tata Group have made it to the prestigious TIME’s list of 100 World’s Most Influential Companies of 2024. TIME called Reliance ‘India’s Juggernaut’. Serum Institute is the only other company on the list.
This is the second time that Reliance has found its way into the TIME list. Jio Platforms, the firm that holds digital properties of the conglomerate, was included in the inaugural TIME 100 Most Influential Companies List of 2021.
TIME listed Reliance in the ‘Titans’ category (one of the five categories under which the companies were divided, other being Leaders, Disrupters, Innovators, and Pioneers).
Tata was listed in ‘Titan’s’ category while Serum under ‘Pioneers’.
“Reliance Industries was founded as a textile and polyester company 58 years ago by Dhirubhai Ambani. Today the sprawling conglomerate—which has aligned its growth with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for a ‘self-reliant’ India—is the country’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of more than USD 200 billion,” TIME said.
Now led by Dhirubhai’s son Mukesh, the Mumbai-based company has ventures in energy, retail, and telecommunications, among others, and has made its chairman Asia’s richest man, it said.
The publication went on to stated that in February, Reliance came out on top in a fiercely competitive race to dominate India’s burgeoning streaming market by striking a USD 8.5 billion merger deal with Disney’s India business.
“The deal will bring together more than 100 television channels and give the combined group around a 31 per cent share of India’s streaming market compared to rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime with 8 per cent each,” according to analytics firm Comscore.
Reliance has revolutionized several economic sectors in the world’s most populous country by making world-class products and services available at affordable prices with multiple innovations.
Under Mukesh Ambani, the firm’s telecom arm Jio revolutionized India’s digital landscape and drove digital inclusion on an unprecedented scale with the most affordable mobile data tariffs in the world.
It set up the world’s largest single location refining complex.
Reliance Retail is ranked among the top 100 retailers globally and in FY24 it registered 1.06 billion footfalls across its 18,800+ stores (67 per cent of which are in small towns and villages).
Reliance is investing USD 10 billion in building the most comprehensive ecosystem for new energy and new materials in India and has set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2035.
TIME described Serum as the world’s biggest vaccine maker, churning out billions of vaccines. The company makes 3.5 billion doses every year, including for measles, polio, and most recently, HPV.
“Serum’s CEO Adar Poonawalla says the company’s success can largely be chalked up to its private ownership. Not being beholden to shareholders allows it to keep vaccine prices low (the R21 will cost USD 4 a shot),” the publication said.
Tata Group, it said, was founded in 1868 and has a vast portfolio extending from steel, software, watches, subsea cables, and chemicals, to salt, grains, air-conditioners, fashion, and hotels.
“But as rivals have aggressively courted new businesses, it struggled to keep up with stiff competition. In 2017, after over a century of family management, N Chandrasekaran took over as chairman despite having no personal ties to the family—highly unusual when India’s business landscape is ruled by family succession plans,” TIME said.
As chair, he has transformed the group by investing in tech manufacturing, AI, and semiconductor chips.
In 2023, it became the first Indian company to assemble iPhones, and is building another plant, it said, adding that in September, Tata announced a partnership with Nvidia to develop an AI cloud in India.
“And this year, it announced plans for the country’s first major semiconductor manufacturing facility. The moves seem to be paying off: in February, Tata’s combined market capitalization reached a whopping USD 365 billion, more than the entire economy of India’s neighbor and rival, Pakistan,” it added.
This is the fourth edition of annual TIME100 Most Influential Companies list, highlighting companies making an extraordinary impact around the world. To assemble the list, TIME solicited nominations across sectors, and polled its global network of contributors and correspondents, as well as outside experts.
Then, TIME editors evaluated each on key factors, including impact, innovation, ambition, and success. The result is a diverse group of 100 businesses helping chart an essential path forward.
(Source: PTI)
“The criminalization of politics is directly related to “Gangster Capitalism” that is being practiced in India since its independence in 1947. In India, politicians are selected & financed by the “New India Company” – NIC; voters play a part in the charade of voting for them! It was Congress that gave their blessings to the formation of “New India Company” in 1947 to replace “The East India Company” with prominent shareholders of that time like Birlas, Sighania’s etc. The current prominent Shareholders of “New India Company” are namely: Ambani, Adani, Tata, Aggarwals, Jindals, Ruia’s & Fraud Religious Gurus Ram Dev, Ravi Shankar, Jaggi Vasudev with many other major names. NIC along with the Politicians they select; are the termites that have eaten up the public wealth along with the social and moral fiber of India.”
“The irony is that Modi’s BJP rather its parent organizations RSS, Hindu Maha Sabha & VHP etc.were working for British and never participated in the freedom struggle of India. Here Modi is pretending to honor Mahatma Gandi and the same Modi publicly honors his idol Savarkar whose follower Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi!”
Since my student days every year on Independence Day, I used to look back and compare the gradual deterioration in the functioning of democracy, erosion in moral and social fiber of the society with the previous year in India.
1990 was a turning point in my life when Chandra Shekhar with with 61 MP’s (out of 525-member lower house) from the breakaway group of Janta Dal was installed Proxy PM with the outside support of 195 Congress MP’s under Rajiv Gandhi & 25 MP’s of splinter groups by toppling the V P Singh government. The entire operation was financed by Dhirubhai Ambani with bribes to every MP because V P Singh government was pursuing money laundering, tax evasion and other wrong doings against Ambani group. Ambani controlled the Proxy PM Chandra Shekhar’s government to get legislations and ordinances passed in to favor his business activities and drop all investigations against his group. That forced me to say publicly that from now onward the likes of Ambani’s can install any one as Proxy PM in India, when ever they feel like. That also forced me to think beyond India; where I can raise my family and teach my children that truth, honesty, ethics and service to mankind must be the foundations of your life. After exploring Europe, Middle East, South Asia & Canada; finally my search ended in 1996 and I permanently migrated to USA.
After Chandra Shekhar, Indians have seen administration after administrations marred in corruption, criminals getting elected to public offices and MLA’s &MPs for sale to the highest bidder; all under the facade of democracy. Since 2014 this deterioration has been so fast that India can no longer be called a democracy and the most pathetic: it is inhibited by the world famous rich, highly educated and intelligent people that do not care about social and moral corruption that has infected every institution of their government while majority of their fellow Indians live subhuman lives in the ocean of poverty and hunger with no basic human rights.
What the Indian’s are celebrating this year and why they are celebrating; only they can explain. Next year, India is going to celebrate 75th anniversary of its Independence on Aug 15, 2022. Modi government started the 75-week of festivities on March 12, 2021 on the 91st anniversary of the historic Dandi Satyagraha/March of March 12, 1930, an act of nonviolent civil disobedienceled by Mahatma Gandhi against British colonial government. The irony is that Modi’s BJP rather its parent organizations RSS, Hindu Maha Sabha & VHP etc. were working for British and never participated in the freedom struggle of India. Here Modi is pretending to honor Mahatma Gandi and the same Modi publicly honors his idol Savarkar whose follower Nathuram Godse killedMahatma Gandhi!
This 75-week long Celebrations has 5 themes “Freedom Struggle, Ideas at 75, Achievements at 75, Actions at 75 and Resolve at 75 that will end on August 15, 2023. Modi who is famous for his Jumla’s aka Election Rhetoric, has no specific plans through these celebrations, to end unemployment, hunger, poverty, corruption, communalism, catechism, crimes against women, plans for better healthcare, better education, support to micro industries and to end boarder disputes with China and Pakistan. These celebrations will be used as Campaign tools for 7 state elections, Vice President, President, Rajya Sabha & Lok Sabha By-Elections in 2022 and 9 state elections in 2023 and off course 2024 General Elections. That tells us Modi is least bothered about the mounting socio economic and border problems. Moreover, these celebrations must be seen in the same context when Modi advanced the Kumbh Mela by one year from usual 12 years to 11 years to manipulate 5 State Elections and UP Panchayat Elections around Kumbh Mela in early 2021. This resulted in humanitarian crisis and almost 5 million covid deaths in India. These deaths are a direct result of Modi’s arrogance, complacency, lack of preparation, fake nationalism, and the criminal neglect of his constitutional duties in handling Covid pandemic in India. I leave it to the readers to assess; what these 75 weeklong celebrations rather US Presidential style lavish political campaign by Modi aka BJP by completely ignoring governance of India and states will bring for common person.
The most disturbing is Modi’s BJP MP’s and his own Cabinet of Ministers have the most criminals in the current Parliament. Out of 303 BJP MP’s, 116 have criminal record including a bomb maker & a terrorism accused and 22 are in Cabinet and out of those 16 ministers have serious criminal cases registered against them. Most pathetic is Home Minister Amit Shah was accused of having orchestrated the extrajudicial killings under CM Modi of Gujarat. Serious criminal cases include terrorism, treason, arson, murder, rape, robbery, burglary, communal disharmony/hate speeches, electoral violations, and kidnapping, among others. Unfortunately, of the 539 winning candidates analyzed by the ADR, as many as 233 MPs or 43% have criminal charges. Nearly 29% of the cases are related to rape, murder, attempt to murder or crime against women. “There is an increase of 109% [in 2019] in the number of MPs with declared serious criminal cases since 2009,” it said. If that is the plight of the India’s Parliament and government run by criminals; one can for sure say the states must be doing worse than this!
The criminalization of politics is directly related to “Gangster Capitalism” that is being practiced in India since its independence in 1947. In India, politicians are selected & financed by the “New India Company” – NIC; voters play a part in the charade of voting for them! It was Congress that gave their blessings to the formation of “New India Company” in 1947 to replace “The East India Company” with prominent shareholders of that time like Birlas, Sighania’s etc. The current prominent Shareholders of “New India Company” are namely: Ambani, Adani, Tata, Aggarwals, Jindals, Ruia’s & Fraud Religious Gurus Ram Dev, Ravi Shankar, Jaggi Vasudev with many other major names. NIC along with the Politicians they select; are the termites that have eaten up the public wealth along with the social and moral fiber of India. They are also responsible for acute poverty, illiteracy, un-employment, communalism, catechism, lack of basic civic & health care services and massive corruption at all levels of governance including judiciary & media in India. The corruption in Media has reached to new level after 2014 that 99% of the Mainstream Media is owned by NIC shareholders and they decide what information is to be released for public consumption and anyone questioning the rulers is an “Anti-National”.
The most dangerous part is that NIC shareholders have no relevant experience or expertise or has ever invented any product or an idea. None of them have any vision for a country of over 1.39 billion people with the majority of them being poor. Their expertise is in how to swindle and scam to get bank funding for their highly cost inflated projects. They buy/lease perpetually, public owned natural wealth like land, oil wells, spectrum, mining rights, airports, railway stations, National Monuments and more at highly undervalued cost & terms that is a fraud on the owners/public. The other expertise they do have is in financing criminal, communal & corrupt politicians with no vision for the country; so that these shareholders can govern India through them. The recent example is coronation of Viceroy Modi first as CM of Gujarat and later as PM of India. Adani and Ambani has prospered the most under Modi; Adani from $70 mil net worth in 1998 is now $62.7 Bil and Ambani who was Congress Party owner turned BJP owner in 2013, his net worth zoomed from $23.6 Bil to $ 84 Bil despite India’s GDP falling from 10% growth to -8% in 2021 amid 45 years high unemployment, poverty and hunger that may lead to humanitarian crisis.
Are Indians proud of this journey of 75 years where hard-core criminals are running their country and enriching themselves and their masters? Are Indians happy and proud of this journey that has corrupted the social and moral fiber of the society?
Does Modi and his Masters; the Shareholders of NIC; have the guts to speak and have honest discussions on the issues raised above with solutions, in public forums?
Tata Digital Ltd, a wholly-owned arm of Tata Sons, on Thursday said it will acquire a majority stake in 1MG Technologies Ltd, an online healthcare marketplace. The company, however, did not disclose the financial details of the transaction. Just days after the company said it will invest USD 75 million (around Rs 550 crore) in fitness-focused Curefit Healthcare for an undisclosed stake, Tata Digital said its investment in 1MG is in line with Tata Group’s vision of creating a digital ecosystem which addresses the consumer needs across categories in a unified manner. Tata Digital said e-pharmacy, e-diagnostics and tele-consultation are critical segments in this ecosystem and have been among the fastest growing segments in this space, as this sector enabled access to healthcare through the pandemic.
Signup to our Newsletter!
Don’t miss out on all the happenings around the world
