 Hello and let's talk about the Geoverse, we are of course referring to Mukesh Agbani's grand plans for the expansion of reliance geo that he announced with the company's annual general body meeting earlier this week. It's clear that the company which began with the polyester business and moved on to petrochemicals is now fully committed to data. From 5G and phones to geomart and geoglass reliance is said to ensure that it's in every aspect of our life. We'll talk a bit about more of this but here are some details. One of the most important bits of news to come out of the meeting was that Google will pick up a 7.7% stake in the geo platform by investing over 33,700 crore rupees. Another internet giant Facebook already has a 9.9% stake. In the past few months reliance has reportedly raised Rs 152,056 crore, that's 152,056 crore. So how is Mukesh Agbani planning to spend this money? There's a host of new projects including geoglass which is a mixed reality headset which will give the option of holographic calling according to CNBC. There's GOTV Plus which will bring together Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime and other streaming services. But one of the more important initiatives is geomart which is said to expand massively in the retail sector and bring Kirana stores into its platform. The other key initiative is its old 5G platform which will be rolled out soon. So what does this bouquet of products from the House of Ambani mean for India and the Indians? We talked to journalists on Indio Chakravarti to find out. Thank you all Indio for joining us. So obviously in the media there's been a lot of speculation over the fluctuating wealth of Mukesh Ambani. There's a lot of drama over there. There's six switches, seven switches, eight switches. But the more important thing after the AGM has been the fact that this marks at least many of the announcements mark key moments in the expansion. We've already heard a lot of news about this before about geomart, about the entry into the realm of 5G and about the idea of sort of building maybe a universe of geo so to speak where almost every aspect of life, something of geo is really involved. So at a macro level how do you sort of see what is happening with the kind of investments reliance? I think that one of the things that Mukesh Ambani himself had announced when he had launched geo was to say that data is the oil of the future. And we know that his father was very great at identifying what was the oil of the previous century, which is oil itself. And did a great job in dealing with which he called the most important external environment for any company, which is the government of India. He was great at dealing with the government of India. And after becoming this massive vehemence, which I think provides more than 5% of the government's gross tax revenues, it has massive influence. And we can see in how government policy seems to dovetail with everything that geo wants to do. Now, I think the question is which way are we heading in terms of governance itself? We have seen historically what happens when you give people things for free or cheap. When geo came in, it gave you the ability to make phone calls almost for free and data was extremely cheap. It was a very, very cheap package, which almost everyone utilized, whether you were very poor or you were reasonably well to do. The quality of the service appears to have improved over time and it's now charging whatever others are charging. However, it is still relatively cheap. The question is, can it actually charge you money and make a profit on it? My belief is that you cannot make money on data. I don't think anyone makes money on data, what they make money on, by providing data from consumers. So if you look at Google or Facebook, they make money on advertising. They target advertising to people and this is a very murky zone. We know about it. The ethical aspects of it have been discussed quite in detail. The question is what it does in terms of power. Now, if you look at it, Prashan, one of the things that, what is the basic model ultimately? How do you make money from this? If you look at something like Amazon, it hardly makes any money from what it is famous for, which is delivering goods to your home. It doesn't make any money on it across the world. You could say that it doesn't make any money on it across the world because it is investing more and more in this. Yes, that's true. Probably true. But its main business is actually what is Amazon Web Services, AWS, which is the cloud services it provides, which subsidizes the rest of the world. But it knows that its interface with the consumer is actually always through this Amazon delivery system. Now, the question is how do you make money? Ultimately, the only way to make money is to get government contracts. So how do you get government contracts? If you look at it, in the future, everything will have its own IP. Prashan, in the sense that you have a fridge. Today, of course, high-end fridges might have that. But soon, we know every cheap item today has a microchip, which we wouldn't have thought of 20 years ago. Similarly, everything will have some embedded IP, something which can transmit its... Internet of things, basically. Yeah, absolutely. So whether it's a fridge, whether it's a car, now what will happen? Suppose you have a car has its own IP, right? And cars are flowing on the road. Traffic lights can regulate movement of cars, right? This is based on the flow of cars that it can see. So it sees an IP, an artificial intelligence traffic light, looks at a car's IP and says, okay, this car goes to these four places at this time, or goes to only this one place. The red light can actually come on right now, or we can see that this is the flow one kilometer away where it's going to go. So therefore, we can adjust the timing of the red light. Who's going to pay for it? I can't, right? The more there is artificial intelligence, the less you and I are going to be able to pay for it because we won't have work. As we are seeing that people will be replaced by machines, so there'll be lower income. Governments will have to pay for it. So ultimately, it's a game of government contract. All of this is ultimately a game of taking taxpayers' money or whatever fiscal spending governments do, and getting money from that. Because you subsidize the consumer, you create a base, you create a brand, and governments then give you the contracts because everyone's operating on a geo platform. So ultimately, the game is to get everything on a geo platform. So everything that is bought and sold once, it becomes an internet of things. Once it becomes everything as an IP, your fridge can decide what to order. Then that is where your entire life is being controlled by data, which is controlled by someone else. I know there's a lot of fires posturing by everyone saying, no corporates, even Mukesh Ambani has said that corporates should not own data. Data is a national asset. It's national property. It's the people's property. Therefore, foreigners shouldn't have access to data. The question is that with Facebook, today I think the American companies own about 26% of geo. Out of which about 17.5% is owned by Facebook and Google. There was talk that Microsoft might pick up 2.5% of Google. Towards the end of May, we saw these reports coming, which are of geo, but it didn't happen. But geo has, I think, 0.4% stake is held by Intel Capital. If you look at it, 5 or 6 data and internet companies, hardware companies included, are either present inside geo or have deals with geo. For instance, Microsoft has a deal with geo. If you look at it over a period of time, there is the presence of some of the biggest internet players in the world. Google and Facebook are out there. The relationship with geo is essentially via WhatsApp. So this is the data part. And then there are worries about what happens when geo kind of controls the retail space. There's also, I think you were only mentioning, there's this whole angle of this being portrayed as part of a make in India or an hardware aspect. So do you see any credence in that? You know, there is, of course, I mean, if you have money, what stops you from the reason why you can't make in India is because the government isn't spending in creating assets. So Indian companies are saving their money, they're buying back shares, or they're raising money abroad and were buying companies outside. I mean, if the Tata's could go outside and buy these big companies, whether it was, you know, the steel companies or whether it was Jaguar Land Rover, there was no reason why it couldn't have invested in India. So the whole idea that we don't have capital is only partially true. So reliance has huge amounts of capital. What's stopping it from investing in, like it's doing something like a Google Glass, I understand, right, where it's in a glass interface which you can use to a 3D virtual reality glass. So yes, there is a certain degree of make in India, but we saw that controversy about how it kind of replicates the Zoom interface completely. There was a, what is, I can't exactly remember who were the people doing it, so I won't quote them. There were bureaucrats, government bureaucrats, former bureaucrats who were kind of saying that Zoom, a Geo interface is so brilliant. This Geo conference thing is so much better. GeoMete is so much better than Zoom, it is so clean and this is all part of make in India. This is great, this is make in India and this is Atman Erbar, right? So yes, it dovetails beautifully with the entire point of Atman Erbar. Maybe Atman Erbar is, you know, a prequel to big business controlling a lot of the stuff where there was a certain amount of competition. So I think that one thing that the people are joking is that in the ease of doing business for foreign companies there should be one additional column put in by the government which is partnership with Geo, right? It's very easy to get into a deal with Geo. That's the easiest thing to do because I think Geo has raised in terms of FDI close to 20 billion dollars, right? Yeah, so our FDI itself is about 10 billion dollars and that is nearly half of what has been put into this country from the US. US FDI is close to 10 billion dollars. And if you look at it, the US has put in about 20 odd billion dollars, 20, 21 billion dollars in FDI since 2000 to 2020. And half of that has gone to Geo right now. In the 20 year period, half of that is Geo. So you can see what, you want us to read between the lines. And finally, a quick word on the issue of retail. Now Geo's model is apparently to bring Kirana stores on the same platform, on a single platform. And basically you can use WhatsApp and you can use the Geo platform to order from your local store, right? And suppose you live in one block in a residential zone and your local guy doesn't have it, maybe two kilometers away or a kilometer away, another Kirana store has it. So all of them are being brought on a platform. Now the question is how much will Geo take as a cut? How much will Geo subsidize initially? You've seen what initial subsidies and investments can create havoc in models of like we've seen in Uber and Ola, right? So what will it do initially? How will it compete? What competition will do to Kirana's local Kirana store? Because even in residential areas in metros and maybe must be true about smaller towns as well, there are some stores which are very small, they sell eggs and bread and some basic provisions and then there are larger ones, right? Who do the same thing but something more? So the question is, is it going to kill that eggs and bread guy? So that is the worry that one has to look at when this consolidation takes place because it has happened across the world. Of course this is a new model, we don't know how it's going to work but there is no reason for the laws of economics to not work there. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Prashant.