Reliance Turns 25 On The Bourses

Reliance Industries (RIL) tomorrow completes 25 years of trading on the Indian exchanges. Though RIL may not be the first company to celebrate its silver jubilee on the bourses, the day is particularly significant since the late founder chairman Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with creating an equity cult in the country.

When the company went public in 1978, it had 57,949 shareholders, no small figure by the standards of those days. Even today not many companies can boast of such a investor base. Today, Reliance has 33 lakh shareholders, making it the largest shareholder base of any company in the world. Simply put, one out every four investors in India is a Reliance investor today.

 

On its first day of trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange, the scrip traded at around Rs 17-18 for a Rs 10 paid-up share.

Those initial investors have seen the value of their investments grow by a compounded annual growth rate of 22.8 per cent. An investment of Rs 1,000 in the company in 1978 is worth over Rs 1,73,000 today.

The scrip all through these years has been a traders and speculators