RIL plans power foray for retail biz

The Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to set up captive power generation capacity of around 4,000MW at an investment of Rs12,000 crore to supply power to the 6,000 outlets that its subsidiary Reliance Retail plans to open.

The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, managed by Mukesh Ambani’s brother Anil Ambani, claims that this violates an existing non-compete agreement between the two business groups.

“The first of these captive units will be set up in Maharashtra,” said an RIL executive, who did not wish to be named.

The captive power units will have a unit size of around 400MW each and will generate power at a tariff of Rs2.60 per unit. RIL is in talks with Siemens Corp., Alstom, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and General Electric for setting up the power generation units.

Read more at Livemint.com

Ambani Vs Ambani or Ambani & Ambani

It is fashionable for Indian media to describe any bickering in the Ambani household as Ambani vs Ambani. For a moment, spare a thought for Ambani & Ambani. If the net worth of the two Ambani brothers is combined, it will propel them to the fourth slot globally in the Forbes list of billionaires and to the No.1 position among Indian billionaires, even ahead of Lakshmi Niwas Mittal.

Think about it. Their combined wealth of $38.3 billion will make them the second-richest business family in the world, next only to the Waltons of Wal-Mart whose combined wealth tots up to a staggering $83 billion. As Mukesh Ambani gears up to meet the threat of Wal-Mart in India, he might appreciate the irony.

Leave aside the irony, it would have made the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani proud. Strategy gurus around the world may see this as a great opportunity for a Harvard or a Kellogg case study - call it 'Divide And Grow.' It is possible that the emergence of the Ambanis as one of the biggest business families in the world would not have taken place if the two brothers had not split.

Read more at The Economic Times