JAN. 24, 2017
Anil Ambani’s
Reliance
Entertainment
issues press release
announcing Indo-
French production
nOmber OneDEC. 23, 2016
Indian and France
sign contract for 36
Rafale fighter
jets; aircraft to be
delivered between
2019 and 2022
MAR. 9, 2018 President
Emmanuel Macron arrives in
New Delhi on 4-day visit. Dassault
supplies Indian delegation with
a list of 72 offset partners. Anil
Ambani is one of themanother version of the same AFP re-
port carried by French newspaper Le
Monde saw him repeat his assertion.
The Reliance group had appeared as
part of the ‘new formula’ of negotia-
tions on the Rafale purchase, ‘decided
by the Modi government after taking
office’, he said.A
Reliance Defence official
says there was no link be-
tween the incorporation of
the company in March 2015
and the PM’s visit. “The aircraft con-
tract was signed in September 2016,
21 months af ter Reliance’s decision to
get into the defence business and 18
months post the incorporation of Reli-
ance Defence,” he says. The deal’s off-
sets of approximately Rs 30,000 crore
were the largest since the policy was
introduced in 2005. As such, a defence
OEM (original equipment manufac-
turer) has to source between 30 and 50
per cent of the value of all contracts
over Rs 2,000 crore from the custom-
er’s domestic industry. Under the Ra-
fale deal, French aircraft-maker Das-
sault and its partners, engine-maker
Safran and radar-maker Thales, are to
source Rs 30,000 crore worth of pur-
chases from India’s local industry. The
key objectives of offsets are to leverage
capital acquisitions to develop Indian
defence R&D and encourage the aero-
space and internal security sectors.
Dassault, on its part, clarified that
they had indeed chosen Reliance as a
partner as per the defence ministry’soffset policy which allows OEMs to
choose their Indian defence partner.
Interestingly, it was Mukesh Am-
bani’s Reliance Aerospace Technolo-
gies Ltd (RATL) which was Dassault’s
main offset partner in the 126 aircraft
deal under the UPA in 2012. RATL
had been incorporated in September
2008 when the IAF was yet to select
an aircraft. The Dassault Aviation and
RATL MoU was announced in Janu-
ary 2012, days after Rafale won the bid
for the 126 jets. As per the contract, 18
jets were to come in a f lyaway condi-
tion while the remaining 108 would be
built in India by HAL under a transfer
of technology agreement. Subsequent-
ly, the MMRCA (Medium Multi-Role
Combat Aircraft) negotiations were
stalled for three years. Meanwhile, a
rapprochement between the Ambani
brothers saw Mukesh exiting the de-
fence business. (RIL did not respond
to an e-mail questionnaire seeking
comment on their foray into defence.)
Anil announced his entry into the
defence business in March 2015 with
the buyout of the debt-ridden Pipavav
Shipyard in Gujarat. By April of the
same year, he had already registered
14 different companies for building
land systems, warships and aircraft.
Former defence minister Manohar
Parrikar, who was himself an entre-
preneur once, supplying components
to the defence ministry, also privately
expressed his surprise at the dizzying
spread of the younger Ambani’s busi-
ness and wondered if the industrialist