Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance now wants to become the next IT giant, ties up with GE

Reliance Industries is now planning to enter the software service business and aiming to become the next IT giant in India.

Mukesh Ambani-led RIL has tied up with General Electric’s industrial-innternet-of things platform Predic and is planning to create apps and sell it to other companies.

"We will be gradually evolving into a software and services firm. Jio is the foundation on which all of this will be leveraged and we will be building up on that. This is a venture that is evolving. GE and Reliance are trying to size up the scale of this,” Manoj Chouthai, chief technology officer at Reliance, told ET.

The company is planning to use Predix internally, first in oil and gas and then in its retail, telecom and healthcare businesses and is now working on a blueprint for its digital services unit. It aims to firm up a plan with GE in the next six months.

According to a research firm IndustryARC Research, the industrial-internet-of-things opportunity is likely to touch $124 billion by 2021.

"We are moving fast and furious into the industrial-internet-of-things. We want to build an organisation that can serve the needs of Reliance and, as the partnership with GE starts to evolve, we want to be in the position of being able to help other companies within India,, Chouthai, told ET.

GE is betting that the Predix Platform, which is the American conglomerate's core offering in the software business, will become "operating system for the industrial-internet-of-things.

GE's Predix platform is on track to generate over $7 billion in revenue this year and $15 billion by 2020. GE's partnership with Reliance is also a first for the company. The earlier tie-ups have been with telecom, technology and IT firms, including India's Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and L&T Infotech.

"This one is particularly different and one we consider special because it the first one that starts with the marriage of two industrial companies,” said Ashish Bhandari, CEO, oil & gas, for GE South Asia.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani led-Reliance Industries has gradually moved from being a purely manufacturing company to a services and technology firm. The conglomerate first toyed with the idea of entering the business in the 90s.