The annual general meetings of Reliance Industries have always been a lot more than formalities. They are orchestrated events where Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and Reliance’s chairman, outlines his bold, new ambitions. The 2016 AGM is still remembered as a watershed moment, where Ambani announced the launch of Jio’s 4G services, offering free lifetime voice calls and dirt-cheap data. The move upended India’s telecom sector. Millions of customers left their carriers for Jio, and in three years it became India’s largest telecom operator. Today, Jio has around 500 million subscribers, and is preparing for a mega stock market listing.
Even as Jio was building scale, Ambani was quietly preparing for his next big disruption. In August 2023, Reliance demerged its financial arm into a separate listed entity, Jio Financial Services (JFS). Over the past year the business has been expanding rapidly, with ambitions spanning asset management, credit, insurance and payments.
Ambani is not known for half measures. Reliance operates the world’s largest single-location refinery in Jamnagar in Gujarat, runs India’s biggest retail chain, and has made ambitious moves in the fast-moving consumer goods sector with plans to challenge the likes of Hindustan Unilever and ITC. The question now is whether Jio Financial Services can deliver an encore of Jio’s telecom success in the complex financial sector.
The opportunity is enormous. India’s banking industry alone is projected to generate $465 billion in net interest income by 2025. The mutual funds industry has expanded six-fold in the past decade; its assets under management rising from Rs12.55 lakh crore in 2015 to more than Rs75 lakh crore in August 2025. The number of retail investors continues to rise sharply, with record inflows into systematic investment plans each month. Insurance penetration is inching upward, as more households embrace financial products. Reliance sees this as fertile ground.
True to form, Ambani has not ventured into the financial services sector on his own. Reliance is partnering with global giants to gain credibility, expertise and speed. In asset management it has tied up with BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager with over $12 trillion in assets. Their 50:50 joint venture, Jio BlackRock, has received approval from regulators to manage funds and advise clients. It has also secured a broking licence. The leadership team includes BlackRock veterans—Sid Swaminathan, who headed international index equity at the American firm, now serves as chief executive of Jio BlackRock Asset Management, while Marc Pilgrem, formerly responsible for specialist clients in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, leads Jio BlackRock Investment Managers.
The joint venture wasted little time in making an impact. Its fixed-income products collected nearly Rs18,000 crore in assets, instantly ranking it among the top 15 asset managers by debt assets under management. Equity offerings have begun with passive index funds, and an active flexi-cap scheme. The venture is drawing on BlackRock’s renowned Aladdin platform, a data and analytics system that supports end-to-end investment management.
“Our partnership with BlackRock is set to redefine investing in India,” said Hitesh Sethia, chief executive of Jio Financial Services. “Aladdin allows Jio BlackRock to manufacture high-quality funds at scale. These funds are then distributed widely through JFS’s expansive network that covers millions of Indians.”
Insurance is another area of rapid movement. JFS has a reinsurance joint venture with Allianz and has signed agreements to launch joint ventures in both general and life insurance. Its broking arm already works with 34 insurers and collected premiums of Rs900 crore in 2024–25. The company is also aggressively building its credit book. Assets under management in Jio Credit jumped from just Rs173 crore in 2023–24 to Rs11,665 crore in the first quarter of 2025–26. Jio Payments Bank, which saw deposits rise by 21 per cent to Rs358 crore in the June quarter, has expanded its CASA (current and savings account) base to 2.58 million customers. Reliance recently acquired SBI’s stake in the bank, taking full ownership.
With mutual funds, credit, insurance and payments all scaling simultaneously, JFS is preparing to enter broking and wealth management. It aims to tap the surge of retail investors opening demat accounts in India—41 million were added in 2024–25 alone, bringing the total to 192 million. Systematic investment plans now contribute more than Rs28,000 crore in monthly inflows, with retail investors holding nearly Rs44 lakh crore in assets. JFS believes its technology-driven platform and distribution reach can help capture a significant portion of this growth.
JFS is still a small player. In 2024–25 it posted a net profit of Rs1,613 crore on revenues of Rs2,079 crore, marginally higher than the previous year. By comparison, Aditya Birla Capital earned over Rs3,332 crore on revenues of about Rs40,600 crore, while Bajaj Finserv posted profits of nearly Rs9,000 crore on revenues exceeding Rs1.3 lakh crore. Analysts argue that Reliance’s strategy is about long-term positioning rather than short-term numbers.
“JFS is well-positioned to capitalise on India’s accelerating digital adoption and financial inclusion journey,” said Ishank Gupta of Deven Choksey Research. “The management’s emphasis on product depth, distribution reach, data intelligence and talent will continue to drive synergies across the platform.”
The broader industry dynamics are favourable. Mutual fund assets reached over Rs75 lakh crore in August 2025, with equity schemes recording positive inflows for 54 consecutive months. Systematic investment plans remain the backbone of retail participation, and insurance penetration, while modest at around 4 per cent of GDP compared with a global average of 7 per cent, is rising steadily. Household savings are shifting away from gold and real estate towards financial assets.
But Reliance will not have the market to itself. More than half a dozen new mutual fund firms have entered the market in 2024 and 2025, including Angel One, Capitalmind and The Wealth Company. Fintechs such as Zerodha and Groww have launched their own asset management arms, and PhonePe has entered stockbroking. Foreign players are also returning—South Africa’s Sanlam recently took a 23 per cent stake in Shriram Asset Management as co-promoter.
The growth runway is still long. India’s mutual fund penetration touched an all-time high of 19.9 per cent of GDP, according to AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India), but it remains low compared with the global average of 67 per cent. “Retail participation is at an all-time high, with mutual fund folios crossing 24.89 crore and SIP assets under management touching Rs15.18 lakh crore,” said a top executive of a mutual fund house. “These numbers highlight not just the depth of the market but also the vast untapped potential that lies ahead—particularly in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where awareness and adoption of financial products are rising rapidly.”
But competition will be fierce. “There are platform players like the online discount brokers and then there are advisers. Jio could eat into the share of platform businesses, but not the advisers,” said a Bengaluru-based wealth manager, cautioning that “no one player has an inherent advantage in India. Everyone has a market; as long as they do a good job, they will be successful.”
What Reliance does have, however, is a distribution network unlike any other. Between Jio’s half a billion telecom customers and Reliance Retail’s nationwide reach, the group already touches the daily lives of more Indians than any bank or fintech. Its Jio Finance and MyJio apps are designed to act as entry points for financial services, supported by a technology stack that uses artificial intelligence and advanced analytics. Sethia said the company was “in a unique position to democratise financial services for India, combining the trust of a financial institution with the agility of a technology company.”
At the helm of JFS is K.V. Kamath, one of India’s most respected bankers, who led ICICI Bank during its most expansive years and later served as the founding president of the New Development Bank. Addressing shareholders at the recent AGM, Kamath said: “FY25 was a transformative year for your company, characterised by significant investments in our core: people, processes, products and technology. In FY26, I am confident that we will capitalise on this strong foundation to bring intuitive and innovative products and services to Indians at scale.”
Reliance’s evolution over the past two decades has been defined by reinvention. From petrochemicals to retail to telecom, Ambani has shown a willingness to take bold bets and a determination to dominate. Financial services present a different kind of challenge: one that demands trust, regulatory compliance and resilience in addition to scale. Margins are thinner, risks more complex, and customer loyalty hard to win. Yet, Reliance possesses advantages few can match: financial muscle, a vast, captive customer base and powerful global partners. If it can execute with patience and discipline, Jio Financial Services could become the next pillar of Ambani’s empire.