Reliance Industries and Lemon Tree have been named under this year's boldest companies and individuals on the Boldness in Business 10th Anniversary Awards by Financial Times.
Reliance Industries has received the Drivers of Change Award. Started by Dhirubhai Ambani, and run by Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries is flushed with profits from oil refining. The conglomerate has invested $32bn in Jio, an entrant to India's mobile market that has attracted more than 150mn subscribers in less than 18 months. Its stated its aim to be “democratise the digital culture”, helping vast numbers of Indians to use the internet. It has also transformed Indian telecoms and forced a wave of consolidation involving rivals from Vodafone to Tata.
Lemon Tree has received the Corporate Responsibility/Envioronment award. It is an Indian hotel chain, founded by Patu Keswani, and employs 550 diasbled workers, mostly hearing and speech impaired, but also wheelchair users, as well as others with orthopaedic challenges- who together account for 12% of its workforce of 4600 people. Lemon tree aims to step up to provide scopes to 'opportunity deprived Indians' including those with physical disabilities and youth from deep social and economical disadvantages. 59 year old Patu is a first generation-entrepreneur, and his parents were civil servants- a railway engineer and army doctor.
Among the judges of this awards was Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman and Chief Executive of ArcelorMittal. Nominees included another Indian company- GreyOrange, the Indian warehouse automation specialist, that provides e-commerce companies with robots that help process orders quickly and efficiently. It counts Amazon India, and Flipkart among domestic clients, with exports accounting for 70% of its business.
