Size matters: Reliance should lead a dividend payout boom

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₹18,951 crore, while revenues saw an 11% increase to over ₹2.4 trillion. Its core oil-to-chemicals business faced a few headwinds downstream, while a surge in offshore-gas output shored up hydrocarbons upstream, where oil was subject to global flux, even as Reliance Retail and telecom under Jio fared fairly well, turning in double- or near-double-digit growth on both counts. As far as numbers go, the annual results drew wider attention—as usual, for a whole new proportion of operations achieved over the year.

In fiscal 2023-24, India’s single largest company took its revenues past the ₹10 trillion level and pre-tax profit above the ₹1 trillion mark. As no Indian enterprise has recorded so many digits ever before, this deserves applause in its own right. The rise of our economy has begun to show more prominently than ever in the magnitude of our top businesses, with trillions starting to take the place of billions.

Even in India, we can look at the top league’s corporate sales as a slice of national output: Reliance’s figure is about 3.4% of our nominal GDP. The story of Reliance has been one of relentless growth, with large sums invested over time in diversification. From synthetics, it went in for vertical integration upwards into oil-and-gas and downwards into polymers, while its horizontal extensions addressed the retail and telecom sectors, the latter setting the stage for a big digital play, even as it began investing heavily in clean energy.

Impressively, its strategic pursuit of expansion has rarely got in the way of its financial performance. From here onwards, its prospects look stable. While oil volatility tends to impact a huge chunk of its finances, with input cost spikes often offset by gains in output