Reliance Industries – India’s largest corporate by revenues, profits, and market value – topped 2021 Wizikey News Score ranking as India’s most visible corporate in the media.
The recognition comes on the back of Exchange4Media Group’s recognition recently to Reliance as one of India’s Brands with Best In-house Communications Professionals 2021. The role of a vibrant and savvy Corporate Communications team is extremely important in ensuring media visibility for any company.
Wizikey’s News Score is the world’s first standardized metric to measure news visibility for brands and individuals using Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Machine Learning, and media intelligence. The News Score takes into account various key criteria like the volume of news, headlines presence, the reach of publications, readership, and the like. The score ranges from 0 to 100 and is based on the monitoring of over 5000 publications. It represents the media presence of a brand in publications that matter.
For its No, 1 position Reliance has a News Score of 84.9 for 2021, followed by State Bank of India, Bharti Airtel, Infosys, Tata Motors. Only a few global companies like Google and Facebook have a score above 90.
Reliance’s News Score excludes standalone headline mentions of ‘Jio’. The inclusion should have meaningfully enhanced the score.
Reliance made quite a few key announcements this year across its businesses, as well as philanthropic initiatives, which played a key role in its media visibility.
Reliance was at the forefront of India’s fight against Covid during the second wave in 2021. Most importantly, it transformed its manufacturing units to emerging India’s single largest medical oxygen producer equivalent of 11 percent of India’s total production. Reliance supplied over 1000 MT per day liquid oxygen to support over one lakh hospitalized patients free of cost.
Reliance also carried out the largest vaccine drive among India Inc to administer over 2.5 million vaccine doses to its employees, their families, as well as members of society.
Reliance announced its road map to lead India’s transition to Green Energy, including four Giga Factories at Jamnagar with over $10 billion of investment commitments
Reliance announced five key collaborations – NexWafe, REC, Ambri, Sterling & Wilson Solar, and Stiesdal – for critical next-generation technologies and implementation capabilities to drive its Green Energy foray.
Reliance commissioned two gas fields in the KG basin and successfully conducted auctions to sell its gas to domestic consumers. Reliance is now on its way to contributing 15 percent of India’s total natural gas requirement.
Reliance Jio augmented its spectrum by 55 percent in the auctions held in March 2021 and emerged as the largest holder of sub-GHz and 2300 MHz bands.
Reliance launched the most affordable smartphone ‘Jio Phone Next’ in collaboration with Google at an entry-level cost of Rs 1,999. The phone runs on an optimized version of Google’s Android OS called ‘Pragati OS’.
In line with its vision to add technology-led solutions to serve customers better, Reliance group also made a few acquisitions during the year. They included JustDial, SkyTran, and Urban Ladder.
Jio-bp launched their first fuel retailing outlet to start offering additivated fuels and a differentiated value proposition.
Reliance has been a leading newsmaker among Indian corporates in the past as well.