New frontiers

Mukesh Ambani plays disruptor again, but it might take more than that to dominate the financial services sector

- BY NACHIKET KELKAR

The annual general meetings of Reliance Industries have always been a lot more than formalities. They are orchestrated events where Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and Reliance's chairman, outlines his bold, new ambitions. The 2016 AGM is still remembered as a watershed moment, where Ambani announced the launch of Jio's 4G services, offering free lifetime voice calls and dirt-cheap data. The move upended India’s telecom sector. Millions of customers left their carriers for Jio, and in three years it became India’s largest telecom operator. Today, Jio has around 500 million subscribers, and is preparing for a mega stock market listing.

Even as Jio was building scale, Ambani was quietly preparing for his next big disruption. In August 2023, Reliance demerged its financial arm into a separate listed entity, Jio Financial Services (JFS). Over the past year the business has been expanding rapidly, with ambitions spanning asset management, credit, insurance and payments.

Ambani is not known for half measures. Reliance operates the world’s largest single-location refinery in Jamnagar in Gujarat, runs India’s biggest retail chain, and has made ambitious moves in the fast-moving consumer goods sector with plans to challenge the likes of Hindustan Unilever and ITC. The question now is whether Jio Financial Services can deliver an encore of Jio’s telecom success in the complex financial sector.

The opportunity is enormous. India’s banking industry alone is projected to generate $465 billion in net interest income by 2025. The mutual funds industry has expanded sixfold in the past decade; its assets under management rising from ₹12.55 lakh crore in 2015 to more than ₹75 lakh crore in August 2025. The number of retail investors continues to rise sharply, with record inflows into systematic investment plans each month. Insurance penetration is inching upward, as more households embrace financial products. Reliance sees this as fertile ground.