Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man and one of the world's wealthiest, Thursday said that the group exceeded performance expectations despite the pandemic, but what mattered most was the humanitarian service provided by the group during the crisis in the country.

"Our business and financial success since last AGM have exceeded expectations. But what has given me far greater happiness than our business performance is RIL’s humanitarian efforts during these exceedingly difficult times. Throughout the Covid crisis, our Reliance Family has risen to the occasion with a sense of purpose and national duty. I am sure our efforts of the last year would have made our founding chairman, Dhirubhai Ambani, proud," Mukesh Ambani said in his introductory speech.

After his speech, his wife Nita Ambani spoke about the five Covid-specific missions — Mission Oxygen, Mission COVID Infra, Mission Anna Seva, Mission Employee Care, and Mission Vaccine Suraksha — the company took up in the past year.

"Traditionally, we have never produced medical-grade liquid oxygen. Yet when the need arose, we repurposed our Jamnagar refinery within days to produce high-purity medical grade liquid oxygen," Nita Ambani said, pointing out that setting up a new medical-grade oxygen plant that produces 1,100 metric tonnes oxygen per day takes over a year.

Jio institute will start functioning this year at the Navi Mumbai campus, Nita Ambani announced

 Reliance will also pay the salaries of its staff who succumbed to Covid to the family members for five years. The company will also finance the education of the children of the deceased staff in India. Also, the company will provide an amount of Rs10 lakh to the family of deceased staff, Nita Ambani said explaining RIL's Mission Employee Care.

Production of a low-cost 4G smartphone, JioPhone Next, was announced at the RIL AGM. In the virtually held AGM, it was informed that smartphone has been developed in collaboration with Google. (SAM)