The joint venture by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and IMG to develop, market and manage sports in India has turned out to be a boon for Indian football as the first part of their partnership with the All India Football Federation (AIFF), the group has decided to sponsor 16 India U-14 boys to spend nine months at the IMG Soccer Academy at Florida for nine months.

Back in March, when RIL and IMG announced their partnership, they decided to initiate a scholarship program which would identify Indian athletes with exceptional talent and thereby provided academic scholarships to their residential academy in the US.

It was in January this year that the AIFF held an U-14 festival in Jamshedpur from which the gifted ones were selected. These boys joined the U-13 team from last year and following a camp, the selected 22 boys were sent for the AFC U-14 festival in Iran in May where they managed to hold the hosts twice with the scoreline reading 1-1 and 2-2 respectively.

From these 22 players, 16 were chosen and shall be sponsored by Mukesh Ambani, the fourth richest man in the world according to Forbes, and the IMG group. The players have been summoned to attend a camp in Gurgaon from the 7th of next month until the 27th following which they shall depart for the US along with the coach. When Goal.com contacted the AIFF, they chose to remain mum on the deal.

The IMG Soccer Academy has seven soccer fields and their facilities are used by the Bradenton Academy who run the US Soccer Residency Program which has provided a steady flow of talent for the US national team with the likes of Landon Donovan, Oguchi Onyewu, Freddy Adu, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore coming through their ranks.

This deal marks a new era for sponsorship as it’s the first of its kind in football in India and it’s heartening to see corporates coming forward to support the cause of the most beautiful game.

Interestingly, six of the 16 boys are hailing from Punjab and Chandigarh while the traditional hubs of Indian football, West Bengal and Goa, contributing a player each.

Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries, RIL

Source:http://www.goal.com/en-india/news/2715/india-colts/2010/07/29/2046591/exclusive-img-reliance-to-send-sixteen-india-u-14-boys-to

Mukesh Ambani group’s flagship company Reliance Industries (RIL) has announced its results for the quarter ended June 2010. It has reported a net profit at Rs. 4851 crore as against Rs. 3,666 crore which shows a clear growth of 33.42 per cent on year-on-year basis. A day after RIL reported its best-ever quarterly profit; it surged over 1 per cent in the early trade on Bombay stock Exchange on Wednesday. According to the data, the turnover achieved for the quarter ended 30th June was 61,007 crore, an increase of 88.1 percent over the corresponding period of the previous year. Every field, be it net profit, exports, turnover, EPS and margin saw an upward trend in the quarter 1 results of Reliance Industries Limited. According to the media reports, exports were higher by 103.5 percent at 32,849 crore as against Rs. 16,145 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Boosted by the healthy June quarter results, shares of the country’s most valued corporate rose 1.44 per cent to touch a high of Rs. 1068.70 on the Bombay Stock Exchange. According to statistics, during the quarter ended 30th June, 2010, the production from KG D6 was 304,349 tonnes of crude oil and 5,376 MMSCM of natural gas. As compared to the corresponding period of the previous year’s results, the production of both crude oil and natural gas grew by 207 percent and 210 percent respectively. Commenting on the quarter 1 results of Reliance Industries Limited, Chairman and Managing Director, RIL, Mukesh Ambani said, “We had yet another record quarter due to high operating rates and improving margins across all our businesses. Reliance embarked on two major initiatives to create incremental value. We entered into joint ventures in shale gas to internationalize and diversify our upstream portfolio. Reliance has also committed itself to participate in the high growth and exciting area of broadband wireless. Both these initiatives are in line with the strategy to identify and invest in new, value creating businesses.”

Reliance Industries Limited posted a 32.3 per cent rise in profit and a whopping 85 percent jump in revenues for the quarter ended 30th June. According to the industry experts, this is the highest ever quarterly result including net profit and revenues reported by RIL and its credit goes to the robust performance of its refining and petrochemical businesses. Research MD at CNI, Kishore Ostwal commented on these RIL results and said, “The company has posted impressive quarter earnings which should be good for the overall market. However, I feel the stock will remain flat in the short-term.”

Source:http://news-views.in/reliance-q1-results-see-32-3-jump/

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. said in a tender document on its website that it is inviting companies to develop and carry out production work at its coal bed methane and onshore exploration blocks.

Reliance Industries controls CBM blocks located in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and it expects to drill about 100 wells a year in the next 5 years.

India’s largest company by market capitalisation has invited expressions of interest for this work, which includes drilling, equipment, plant and machinery supplies, at these blocks. The gas blocks were offered by the federal government through auctions in 2001 and in 2003.

These wells will have a target depth of 700 to 1,700 meters, Reliance Industries added.

The company is also inviting contractors for development work at its onshore exploration blocks, which were awarded under the government’s second and fifth round of oil block auctions.

Reliance Industries said it was the operator of these blocks and its partners include Oil & Natural Gas Corp., Okland Offshore Holdings Ltd., the Indian unit of Hardy Oil & Gas PLC and Tullow India Operations Ltd.–a unit of Tullow Oil PLC.

India’s upstream regulator the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons had conducted the second round of auctions under the New Exploration Licensing Policy in 2000 and the fifth round of auctions in 2005.

Reliance Industries tender document set a deadline of July 21 for companies to submit their expressions of interest for the contracts.

Source:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703636404575352381121607608.html

After its high-voltage entry into wireless broadband and the expected debut into power generation, the biggest surprise to come from Reliance Industries (RIL) could be its foray into healthcare. While the final contours are yet to be drawn up, the prevailing thinking in the management is in favour of entering the tertiary healthcare market by acquiring a stake in one of the domestic corporate hospital chains. What may come as a bigger surprise is that the company has sent feelers to brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, promoters of Fortis Healthcare, the country’s second-largest hospital chain. The Singh brothers are currently locked in a takeover battle with Malaysia’s Khazanah for control of Singapore hospital chain Parkway Holdings.

According to industry sources, Mukesh Ambani could be looking at buying around 26% stake in Fortis. The RIL overtures have not gone completely unanswered, since top officials of both companies are understood to have met once to discuss the prospects of such a proposal.

Sources said while RIL is evaluating the scope of buying a stake in an existing hospital chain, it has not ruled out the greenfield route. It is also separately considering expansion of its concept stores branded Reliance Wellness to several cities. Reliance Wellness, which stocks a range of health products, is housed under the Reliance Retail umbrella. It has branches of this format in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad among others.

RIL already has some presence in the pharma sector through Reliance Life Sciences; however, the plans for its foray into hospital business are being chalked out separately.

Source:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/mukesh-sets-eyes-on-26-stake-in-fortis/634990/

Reliance Brands brought the third label – Italian luxury sportswear brand Paul & Shark, to the country. The company has formed a 50-50 JV with its Italian partner and will be spending nearly $ 30 million over five years. Reliance Brands president and CEO Darshan Mehta revealed that they intend to have a long term association with the label. The company will come up with stores in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Bangalore. It will further expand depending on the response that these stores get.

Five years after its exit from the country’s booming telecom sector, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is plotting the road map for a return trip. However, this time around, it won’t be plain vanilla telecom services that RIL will be interested in, but rather the emerging segments of 3G and WiMAX. According to executives familiar with the development, the initial strategy is not to enter as a telecom operator, though this cannot be ruled out in the long run.

Officials told FE that RIL is looking at partnering major handset makers to help them produce low-cost 3G handsets at Rs 4,000-5,000, apart from WiMAX application devices. Currently, the handsets cost over Rs 16,000 on an average.Once the low-cost handset base is built, RIL would be open to buying bulk airtime from service providers and bundling them with handsets, to be sold via Reliance Retail stores.

“It would be like re-selling airtime through a franchise or mobile virtual network operator model, but would be suitably improvised to make it unique,” an official said. The airtime-bundled handsets would be co-branded, stamping RIL’s entry into telecom.“If we are able to drive down costs for 3G and WiMAX-based application services in a major way and popularise them, we would have created a similar wave which we did in CDMA with schemes like “Monsoon Hungama,” the official added.

With the valuation of telecom companies having fallen over 50% in just a year, RIL can, at a later stage, look to acquire a telecom operator either in the domestic market or globally. An RIL spokesperson declined to comment. After the Reliance group split in 2005, Reliance Infocomm went to younger brother Anil Ambani, who renamed it Reliance Communications and launched GSM services.

The demerger was followed by a non-compete agreement between the Ambani brothers, which effectively prevented RIL from entering telecom sector at a time when it was going through blazing growth. The agreement was scrapped on May 23, and FE was the first to report that the company was likely to enter telecom and thermal power sectors.

Launched in mid-2003 by the erstwhile Reliance Infocomm, Monsoon Hungama has been the most successful scheme in the history of India’s mobile telephony, offering a phone connection and handset for merely Rs 500. The CDMA platform on which Monsoon Hungama was launched, was a novel and affordable alternative to the masses. RIL hopes to do the same with 3G…

Source:http://news-views.in/reliance-looking-to-offer-3g-handsets/

Reliance Retail has opened its 25th Reliance Trends store in the country at City Centre Mall in Mangalore. Spread over 13,000 sq ft, the Mangalore store offers more than 100 Indian and international brands, according to a company press release.

Reliance Trends is the apparel, luggage and accessories specialty store. It has presence in places like Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Vishakhapatnam, Chennai, Vijayawada, Belgaum, Vadodara and Amritsar, the press release added.

With an aim to provide consumers with a wide range of high quality products at competitive prices, RRL had launched a chain of jewellery stores under the brand name ‘Reliance Jewels’. With the opening of its new store in Nashik, RRL has now 21 jewellery stores in select cities in the country.

“Reliance Jewels stores offer consumers an unparalleled range of jewellery, backed by the assurance of hallmarked gold and certified diamonds, in an unmatched shopping ambience. We have received a very positive response from our customers across India and are confident that the Reliance Jewels experience will be appreciated by our customers here in Nashik too,” a company official said.

The new jewellery store in Nashik, which is located in City Centre Mall here, will offer a wide range in gold, diamond and wedding jewelry with a wide choice of more than thousands of exquisitely crafted designs from across the country to make it a one-stop shopping destination for fine jewellery.

The range encompasses stunning designs in Kolkata Filigree, Kundan & Polki, Designer Antique, Timeless Naqashi, Hyderabad Ruby and Emerald collections, Temple Jewellery, Fusion collection and exquisite Bridal Jewellery, Plus exclusive diamond jewellery and Solitaire collections in distinctive designs, finish and superior quality

Source:http://news-views.in/reliance-jewels-opens-store-in-nashik/

India’s Reliance Industries, which runs the world’s biggest refining complex, made a rare purchase of Russian Urals crude for July-loading, as the arbitrage window for Western cargoes remains open, trade sources said yesterday.

Reliance bought one Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), or 2.0 million barrels of Urals from oil trader Gunvor, the sources said.

The company also purchased the Urals cargo in April, they said, nearly a year after its last purchase of the medium-sour crude.

Reliance’s daily crude oil purchases rose 42 percent in April from March, when it also bought Australian heavy crude Pyrenees for the first time.

Since the startup of the new plant in December 2008, Reliance has been diversifying its crude slate, making several new and rare purchases, capitalising on the complexity of its plants that allow it to improve margins by processing heavy grades.

Reliance, which runs the refining complex at Jamnagar in western Gujarat state, imported nearly 1.42 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude last month, up from 998,350 bpd in March and from 945,100 bpd a year ago, data showed yesterday.

“It appears Reliance is making up for Iran crude shortfall and looking at diverse sources. Its crude from the Middle East, especially from Saudi Arabia has come down,” said a trade source.

Reliance has not renewed a contract to import crude oil from Iran for financial year 2010, industry sources have said.

Narrowing Brent/Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS) also offered opportunities for flows from Europe and West Africa to Asia, the sources said, a trend reflected in Reliance’s crude purchases.

Front-month EFS for July was valued at around 50 cents a barrel this week, down from the May EFS which jumped to $2.50 a barrel in mid-March, the highest level since December 2008 when Opec producers began record supply curbs.

“The arbitrage window for Western cargoes, such as Urals, to Asia remains open,” said a trader with a East Asia refiner. “It may not be that wide open for East Asia at the current prices, but India is half way, marking it more economical.”

Urals was valued at a premium of around $1 a barrel to Dubai to East Asia on a cost-insurance-freight basis, the trader added.

The prices were competitive to rival Oman crude, whose value was assessed at a 50-cent discount to Dubai on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange.

Refiners and traders were reluctant to take July Oman cargoes, saying the prices were too expensive compared with other medium and heavy crudes after values of benchmark Dubai crude was pushed up in the past two months.

More Urals cargoes are offered to Asian buyers, including Japan and Taiwan refiners, they said.

Source:http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/energy/3682-reliance-industries-makes-rare-purchase-of-urals-crude.html

India’s top auditor CAG has said that audit of the D-6 oil block in the Krishna-Godavari basin operated by Reliance Industries is likely to take 4-5 months more to be finished.

“We require 4-5 months to complete the audit… The process would take time, as this is the first time that we are looking at a private player’s books… It’s a very detailed process”, Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai said.

The CAG is auditing Rs 45,000 crore capital spending by RIL, which is controlled by , to tap natural gas from the D-6 block in K-G basin, following a request from the petroleum ministry in 2007.

He said that RIL had submitted all related documents sought by CAG by the end of January this year.

“All the firms, including RIL, have submitted required documents that we have sought,” said Rai.

However, a Reliance Industries spokesperson refused to offer any comment on the issue.

In a hard-pitched battle last year between the Ambani siblings, younger brother Anil Ambani had alleged that Mukesh Ambani-controlled RIL had inflated capital spending to Rs 45,000 crore from the initial estimate of Rs 12,500 crore for the D-6 block.

CAG’s scope of audit is in respect of the block KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) awarded to RIL for two financial years — 2006-07 and 2007-08 — with access to records of previous years linked to transactions in these years.

It is also understood that the scope of this audit will far exceed the normal course of audit by the CAG and the prime objective may be to detect fraud, if any, by the operator (RIL), allegedly in collusion with oil regulator DGH and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

In 2007, the Petroleum Ministry had asked the CAG to conduct an audit of seven oil and gas blocks, including RIL’s KG-D6 block. After initial reluctance, the CAG is now conducting the audit of four oil & gas blocks, namely KG-D6 of RIL, the Barmer and Ravva oilfields being operated by Cairn India and the Panna-Mukta-Ta.

Source:http://www.hindustantimes.com/RIL-s-K-G-basin-audit-to-take-4-5-months-to-complete-CAG/Article1-544355.aspx