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.

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Reliance Retail in talks with institutes on training manpower

Reliance Retail Ltd., is tying up with various institutes and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to train people in retail courses to overcome the shortages of trained staff needed for the company’s aggressive retail foray.

Reliance Retail is in “advanced stages” of talks with institutes including the government-run Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) and schools run by YMCA and Bharti Vidya Bhawan, according to a senior company official who wished not be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

The firm will require one million direct and indirect employees all over India by 2010 but there are hardly 40,000 to 50,000 people trained in modern retailing, the official said, adding, “Rather than fighting for the existing talent we are enlarging the talent pool.”

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