BENGALURU: The Mukesh D Ambani led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) organized retail segment - Reliance Retail,  continued its growth momentum and profitability in the quarter ended 30 September 2016 (Q2-17, current quarter), while its digital services offering Jio has broken all records in terms of subscriber acquisition.

The RIL earnings release for Q2-17 says that Jio has created a world record by crossing 1.6  crore (16 million) subscribers in its first month of operations (September 2016). RIL says that Jio has achieved this growth faster than any other telecom operator or start up in the world including the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype.

Ambani, said, “We are delighted and humbled by the enthusiastic adoption of Jio by India. Jio is built to empower every Indian with the power of data.”

Further, RIL claims that Jio applications have been very popular on the network. In 1 week from launch, all the 12 Jio applications were ranked in the top 15 applications on Playstore and Appstore. All the Jio applications, including JioTV, JioCinema, JioMusic, JioMagazine, JioNews, which bouquet is worth Rs. 15,000 for an annual subscription, have been provided complimentary for all active Jio subscribers up to 31 December 2017.

Organised Retail

RIL’s Organised Retail segment revenue in the current quarter increased 63 percent year-over-year (y-o-y) to Rs 8,079 crore as compared to Rs 4,856 crore and increased 21.2 percent quarter-over-quarter (q-o-q) from Rs 6,666 crore. 

The segment’s EBIT increased 42.1 percent y-o-y to Rs 162 crore from Rs 114 crore and increased 9.5 percent q-o-q from Rs 148 crore.

RIL says that during the quarter, Reliance Retail added 59 stores across various store concepts and strengthened its distribution network for consumer electronics. Omni commerce channel offerings www.footprint360.com and www.ajio.com gained traction during the quarter. As on 30September 2016, Reliance Retail operated 3,442 stores across 679 cities with an area of over 1.3 crore (13 million) square feet.

RIL numbers

RIL achieved a turnover of Rs 81,651 crore ($ 12.3 billion), an increase of 9.6 percent, as compared to Rs 74,490 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Increase in revenue is primarily on account of increase in volumes in refining, petrochemical and retail businesses.

Operating profit before other income and depreciation (before exceptional item) increased by 20.2 percent on a y-o-y basis to Rs 11,176 crore ($ 1.7 billion) from Rs 9,301 crore in the previous year. Strong operating performance from refining and petrochemicals businesses was partially offset by lower contribution from Oil &  Gas business due to lower volumes and weak price environment says that company.

Profit after tax excluding exceptional items was higher by 43.1 perc ent at Rs 7,206 crore ($ 1.1 billion) as against Rs 5,035 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. 

Basic earnings per share (EPS) excluding exceptional items for the quarter ended 30th September 2016 was Rs 24.4 as against Rs 17.1 in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Note:The unit of currency in this report is the Indian rupee - Rs (also conventionally represented by INR).The Indian numbering system or the Vedic numbering system has been used to denote money values. The basic conversion to the international norm would be:
(a) 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 10 million = 1 crore.
(b) 10,000 lakh = 100 crore = 1 arab = 1 billion.Skype, www.footprint360.com, www.ajio.com, Q2-17