Disaster Management

The Reliance Foundation’s Disaster Management Programme focuses on building resilience and reducing the impact of natural disasters on individuals, communities and the overall economy in India. The programme aims to create stronger and more resilient communities, reduce disaster risks and losses, and empower communities to make decisions on disaster risk reduction. It uses a well-orchestrated structure spanning disaster risk reduction, mitigation, response and recovery based on a proactive, technologydriven, and sustainable approach. It covers all four phases of disasters including promoting climate resilient practices for disaster mitigation. This is implemented through a network of local volunteers and communitybased organisations.

Arts, Culture and Heritage

Reliance Foundation is committed to preserving and promoting Indian art, culture, and heritage. The Foundation works to document and preserve cultural heritage, give artists a platform to showcase their work and provide livelihood opportunities to traditional artists and craftspeople. The Foundation also aims to make Indian art and culture more relevant to young people and help them appreciate and connect with their heritage.

India’s first-of-its-kind, multi-disciplinary cultural space, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre was inaugurated in March 2023, with an exquisite showcase of the best of India across music, theatre, fine arts, and crafts to audiences from India and the world. The Centre marked another definitive step in strengthening India’s cultural infrastructure and bringing to fruition the best of India and the world in the sphere of arts.

In line with Reliance Foundation’s Founder & Chairperson Mrs. Nita M Ambani’s vision to promote art in India, the launch programme featured a specially curated art and craft exposition called ‘Swadesh’ along with three inspiring shows – a musical theatrical called ‘The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation', a costume art exhibition called ‘India in Fashion’ and a visual art show called ‘Sangam/Confluence’. Together, the programmes were an exploration into the diversity of India’s cultural traditions and their impact on the world, while also showcasing the versatility of the spaces at the Cultural Centre. Reliance has been undertaking various initiatives to take Indian art and culture to the global stage.

Reliance Foundation supported a unique event in July 2022 featuring Indian devotional music, Bolava Vitthal, in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Jaipur. The intent was to promote and preserve India’s rich traditional art and culture.

Reliance SMART prioritises the health and well-being of its customers, partnering with pharmaceutical companies to conduct health-related activities. These activities include offering complete health packages at a discounted rate, free eye check-ups, and providing low-cost spectacles to those in need. The Company firmly believes that health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and it actively seeks to promote this philosophy through its customer outreach programmes.

Reinvigorating the Supply Chain for New India

Reliance’s efficient supply chain system includes suppliers, distributors, and logistics partners, both local and global, to source raw materials, manage distribution, and deliver products on time to customers. The Company uses various procurement methods, including direct purchasing, outsourcing, and strategic partnerships, to secure high-quality raw materials at competitive prices. Reliance has a robust state-of-theart logistics infrastructure, including warehouses, distribution centres, and transportation fleet. Digitisation and automation enable the Company to optimise supply chain operations and enhance efficiency and transparency.

Reliance deploys several strategies, including collaboration, communication, supplier development and performance management, to develop and grow a reliable and efficient supply chain to run and grow disruption-free operations.

Retail

Reliance Retail fosters strong trust-based relationships with its vendor partners by providing a transparent and supportive environment for engagement and deploying comprehensive training and development programmes. These programmes focus on improving the work environment and operational excellence of vendor facilities, including technical skills, quality assurance, safety, cost and waste reduction and people management. Around 400 vendor partners have been trained in the current financial year. The effectiveness of the training is monitored through various tools with a focus on continuous improvement and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the value chain and its members.

Reliance Retail will continue to support initiatives that empower and uplift artisan communities by bringing them on a single platform and making their crafts accessible and facilitate market linkages. These initiatives could be in the form of promoting artisan collectives which has representation from different Indian arts and crafts, setting up self-sufficient skill enhancement centres across various regional clusters of India, take measures to enhance productivity and uplifting their quality of life of artisans. These centres may also serve as design and innovation studios for artisans to work on new craft methods and designs through experimentation while working on socio-economic.

Reliance Retail has rolled out a Green Supply Chain initiative that is looking at creating a sustainable supply chain for the ProEarth brand. The initiative covers social and governance aspects such as preference for MSMEs and supply agreements in line with the Code of Conduct, licenses for labour practices and encouraging the adoption of environment-friendly manufacturing, packaging, and delivery processes. The goal is to build sustainable attributes for Tier 1 manufacturers and extend the green supply chain to Tier 2 wet processors, Tier 3 Fabricators, Tier 4 Spinners, and Tier 5 Fibre manufacturers.

Vendor Partners: JioMart’s B2B grocery merchandising team supports MSME vendors across India from 22 states. The products from these vendors are listed at multiple places in the app for merchants to explore and buy on the app. The JioMart platform has helped MSME vendors sell their goods with over 1200 unique SKUs to more than a million merchants. JioMart’s reach has also helped vendors widen distribution and expand market share by reaching territories that they scarcely served before. The platform provides MSME vendors with a sustainable growth platform, improved reach across India, and long-term partnerships.

In addition, the Shramik Naari initiative offers women entrepreneurs a platform to promote and market handicrafts and cottage industry goods such as khakhra, handmade soaps and incense sticks through weekend pop-ups outside stores.

Zero Poverty, Gender Equality and Economic Growth

Reliance is addressing poverty in local communities by investing in the growth and wellbeing of employees, especially blue-collar workers. At least 40% of the blue-collar workforce is drawn from local communities around the Company’s operations. Regular work and life skills training is provided to ensure employability and quality of life. As an equal opportunity employer, the Company offers similar rewards, recognition and benefit standards to workers commensurate with their roles irrespective of gender. Workers’ economic and social security is achieved through pay parity, minimum wages, bonuses, and incentives.

The Company promotes gender equality and employment for persons with disabilities and is working to draw talent from LGBTQ communities into the workforce. These efforts also cover the extended supply chain, with initiatives to increase female workforce participation in warehouse operations and encourage packaging suppliers and merchandising vendors to report on their performance concerning gender equality.

Oil to Chemicals

Reliance integrates sustainability assessments into its supplier evaluation and on-boarding processes. A rigorous screening process is undertaken for all suppliers. All suppliers must explicitly accept the Company’s Supplier Code of Conduct and ensure compliance with labour and human rights, health and safety, environmental protection, ethical conduct, business integrity, and confidentiality laws and standards. Reliance has robust mechanisms to ensure regulatory adherence and prevent unlawful behaviour by suppliers, including through its Ethics Committee and other compliance functions.

Supplier Relationship Management

The Company has made sustained investments in mega projects and operations that have contributed to the development of India’s supplier base in the chemicals and engineering sectors. Reliance supports and encourages its suppliers to indigenise, expand their capabilities, and grow their economic returns. The Company has established long-term relationships with leading Indian engineering companies, raw material suppliers, and industrial goods manufacturers and procured 75% of goods and services (non-crude/nonfeedstock) from indigenous suppliers in FY 2022-23.

Reliance has launched the 'Supplier Relation Management (SRM)' programme to engage in constructive dialogue with critical O&M (Operations and Maintenance) contractors who provide services across the manufacturing sites. The SRM programme aims to build mutually beneficial relationships with the Company’s strategic service providers to drive higher and more satisfying service levels and promote quality, productivity, innovation, and ethical value-based association. Thirty contractors have been selected to participate in the first phase of this programme.

Reliance delivers superior products and services to its customers by working with its contractors to ensure that their employees are competent and that work is carried out in a safe environment in compliance with statutory requirements. Some of the initiatives on this front include:

• Standardisation of PPEs for contract workmen
• Fair & transparent practices of statutory compliance
• Contractor performance evaluation, including safety and environment performance
• Trade & safety test for all contract workmen
• Focus on safety practices and records during new contractor registration
• Pre-medical check-ups for all contract workmen
• Weekly visit of safety ambassadors to plants for improvement of the safety of contract workmen
• Training for field personnel for safe handling of hazardous chemicals by vendors

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Reliance has implemented several initiatives in its supply chain to promote sustainable sourcing, reduce its environmental impact, and promote supplier engagement. The Company’s sustainable sourcing ethos focuses on following eight parameters:

Green Packaging: Reliance focuses on using recycled plastic/PET flakes, returnable pallets/tubes management, optimisation of bag specifications, and palletisation to reduce material usage and ensure safe handling and faster turnaround.

Environment Protection: Reliance aims to reduce wood consumption by replacing pine-wood platters with plastic pallets, bring down paper consumption through the use of 5-ply recycle cartons, and prefer energyefficient products. The Company makes procurement decisions based on energy efficiency and procures energy-efficient LED/solar lights. Reliance also focuses on catalyst regeneration/rare metals reuse.

Supplier Collaboration: Reliance collaborates with its contractors and suppliers to build contractor capacity, invest in R&D, ensure business continuity through suppliers’ new generation leaders, and establish long-term agreements. Major O&M contractors have established new skill development centres for Hazira, Dahej and Vadodara, and have operationalised their skill centre in Jamnagar to cater to the Company’s skilled resource requirements. Mechanical maintenance contractors have arranged train-the-trainer sessions through OEMs. In addition, contractors are investing in research and development (R&D) to continuously develop new tools, clamp design, and standard operating procedures to increase productivity and reduce lead times.

Reliance is also building business continuity with its suppliers’ nextgeneration leaders who are keen on digital initiatives and support the Company’s current roll-out plans. Long-term agreements have been established with packaging suppliers to reduce system costs, including joint programmes with vendors to develop new products that offer alternate grades, lower dosage, and better product quality. Reliance is capturing the risk of high spend critical O&M service providers across business continuity, compliance, and financial risk. These collaborative efforts aim to build trust and establish long-term partnerships with contractors and suppliers to achieve the Company’s business objectives.

Make in India and Development of India’s Engineering Talent: Reliance has taken several initiatives to promote local sourcing and indigenisation of its supply chain. These include the replacement of imported Spin Finish oil with in-house recipes and indigenous manufacture, and development of alternate lubricity additive from a local source for the refinery. Reliance has also onboarded local suppliers to de-risk single source overseas suppliers and developed local integrators to supply low spend spares/consumables currently supplied by multiple tail spend vendors.

Launch of Digital Platform Applications for Procurement and Contracts: Reliance has launched a digital Procurement and Contracts (P&C) platform that uses Industry 4.0 technologies to streamline end-to-end procurement processes. The platform includes several applications such as SourcingFirst, SupplierFirst, WellSpent and BuyerFirst, which ensure compliance with the Company’s sourcing policy, provide real-time visibility of the sourcing cycle, and minimise risk.

The P&C platform has developed multiple digital tools that enhance efficiency and address digital challenges faced by both buyers and suppliers. One such tool is the Automated Measurement Sheet (Green Channel), which considerably reduces invoicing lead time. This enables suppliers/contractors to receive quicker payment and better payment visibility. It also helps Reliance and its suppliers/ contractors to reduce paper usage and manual labor.

Contract Worker Care: Reliance ensures 100% compliance with laws and regulations related to contract worker wages payment verification, contractor worker safety focus, and contract worker PPE norms by work type.

Community Support: Reliance encourages the use of "near plant" community in its contracts.

Regeneration and Safe Disposal: The Company promotes the recycling of scrap thermal insulation, rejuvenation of hydro treating catalysts for refinery, sale of e-waste, used oil, used batteries, used catalyst, and plastic waste to vendors authorised by SPCB/CPCB, and recovery and recycling of all recyclable waste.

Robust Supplier Evaluation Criteria

The company follows a rigorous screening process for supplier registration and assessment during pre- and post-award stages. The Supplier Code of Conduct, is the basis of the company’s relationship with its suppliers. Reliance strengthens its commitment to the Supplier Code of Conduct by seeking explicit acceptance from its suppliers. The company also facilitates measures to comply with Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Bribery, and Prevention of Corruption Act and its own Supplier Code of Conduct. The Ethics Committee and compliance functions undertake regulatory compliance and counterparty checks, real-time screening, and investigations to curb unlawful behaviour by suppliers.

Reliance has also subscribed to EcoVadis Sustainable Procurement solution to assess value chain partners in the O2C business on 21 parameters covering four major criteria: Environment, Labour & Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement. As on March 31, 2023, the Company has engaged with over 90% of suppliers on the aforementioned assessment, of which 11% have completed the assessment.