Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) added over 75,000 jobs in the Indian economy and hired more than 50,000 freshers in financial year 2020-21, despite the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Reliance is India's largest private sector employer and has more than 2,30,000 employees working in different businesses. It added over 75,000 jobs to the Indian economy during the challenging year," the company said in its FY21 annual report.
Reliance Retail was the biggest job providing vertical of the company, hiring over 65,000 employees.
The company said it took several initiatives to ensure physical and mental well-being of its employees amidst the COVID-19 uncertainty, which resulted in its attrition number for the year reducing by less than half as compared to the previous year.
The company hired over 50,000 freshers during the year, including hiring from some of the leading institutions such as IIMs, XLRI, ISB, IITs, NITs, BITS and ICAI through the year.
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RIL reported a 34.8 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 53,739 crore during FY21, despite a 18.3 per cent decline in turnover to Rs 5.39 lakh crore.
Talking about the company's performance, its CMD Mukesh Ambani said RIL continued to execute on its growth plans across businesses despite the unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic.
On fund raise by RIL, Ambani said strong operating cash flow and the largest-ever capital raise has strengthened its balance sheet, enabling the company to deleverage and meet its net-debt zero commitment ahead of stated timeline.
During FY21, Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail raised Rs 1,52,056 crore and Rs 47,265 crore, respectively, from strategic and financial investors, including Facebook and Google, while BP invested Rs 7,629 crore for a 49 per cent stake in the company's fuel retailing business.
Ambani said RIL has a strong balance sheet with high liquidity that will support its growth plans for three hyper-growth engines -- Jio, Retail and O2C (oil to chemicals) business.
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