- Despite Reliance Industries’ financial muscle and partnerships, India’s AI talent pool is likely to emerge as a challenge
- Sector-specific datasets remain fragmented in India, potentially impacting Reliance Industries’ AI plans
- Reliance’s execution track record, integrated ecosystem, and alliances with Meta and Google position it strongly to replicate a Jio-style disruption in AI
Reliance Industries, India’s largest business conglomerate, launched a new AI-focused subsidiary, Reliance Intelligence, at the company’s recent Annual General Meeting (AGM), However, industry experts point out that scaling AI requires more than just capital and partnerships. It demands AI researchers, engineers and domain-specific datasets, all of which are key challenges the company is likely to face in realizing its AI ambitions.
A recent Bain & Company forecast underscores this gap: India’s AI sector could generate over 2.3 million job openings by 2027, yet the country is expected to have only about 1.2 million skilled professionals.
“India faces a scarcity of AI talent or specialized AI/ML researchers, and demand is likely to exceed the supply in terms of engineers. This is one area where Reliance will not only need talent but also retain talent, as the AI talent war has intensified in the West and is already operating on a much bigger scale. Reliance will need to work with academia and related partnerships to build talent in this space,” Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, told Fierce Network.
On the data side, sector-specific datasets in India, particularly in education, healthcare, and agriculture, remain fragmented, under-labeled, or inconsistently managed. Without robust, vernacularized, and properly curated datasets, AI applications risk being ineffective.
“Adding vernacular nuances to India’s fragmented datasets will be another area to crack. But with the right partnerships and approach, if there is one company capable of doing it, it has to be Reliance,” says Pathak.
Ambani’s AI playbook
Reliance Industries’ Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the launch of Reliance Intelligence at the recent Annual General Meeting
Reliance Intelligence defined its four key missions as developing AI data centers, forming global partnerships, introducing AI services for India and housing AI talent. “Reliance Intelligence will build gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centers, powered by green energy and engineered for training and inference at national scale,” said Ambani at the meeting. The company has already started work on building a massive data center in Jamnagar in Western India.
The new entity also announced two separate partnerships with global tech giants, Meta and Google. It formed a 70:30 joint venture with Meta, with the two companies together investing $100 million.
As part of this partnership, Google and Reliance will use AI to transform all of Reliance’s businesses, including energy, retail, telecom and financial services.
“To support this AI adoption, together we are establishing a Jamnagar Cloud region, built for and dedicated to Reliance. It will bring world-class AI and compute from Google Cloud, powered by clean energy from Reliance and connected by Jio’s connected network,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, during the annual meeting.
The company's goal is to deliver easy-to-use AI services for consumers, small businesses and enterprises, and scalable, affordable solutions for the education, healthcare and agriculture sectors, according to Ambani.
Disrupting the Indian AI market
The new venture can potentially disrupt the Indian AI market, much like Reliance Industries’ Jio Infocomm disrupted the Indian telecom market by offering free data for the first six months in 2016.
“Out of these four, we believe building and scaling infrastructure, securing partnerships, should not be a major challenge for Reliance Intelligence, as it has solid access to capital and can leverage its existing assets and vertically integrated ecosystem strength (Jio network), especially with its comprehensive Green energy strategy,” says Pathak.
In addition, Reliance Industries comes with a track record of successfully executing capital-intensive projects and working with technology giants, like Meta and Google. “Partners see an opportunity with respect to scale by partnering with Reliance. Additionally, with India being a data-rich country and Reliance being the country’s largest service provider, access to data should not be an issue as well,” adds Pathak.