Written by R Chandrasekar, Member of SIGMA — The Business Club
Jio Network is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in India and all over the world. It has brought a greater transformation in telecommunication in India. It has officially started its service on 5th September 2016.
Mukesh Ambani said, “Every Indian is used to Gandhigiri, now every Indian can do ‘datagiri’, which is an opportunity to do unlimited good things with unlimited data.”
It was started by Mr. Mukesh Ambani. The company was started to provide internet access to the whole population of India. The company brought a 95% stake in Infotel Broadband Services Limited for Rs 4800 crores and renamed into Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. Currently, it has over 387.5 million subscribers. It has created a new revolution in the internet world by providing data at GBs per day at minimal cost than before. Before its launch, it would cost about Rs 120/GB, but now it is offering 1.5GB/day with free voice calls at Rs 598 for 84 days.
FACTORS FOR ITS SUCCESS
The introduction scheme:
It has provided free calls and data for 3 months at free of cost till December 31st 2016. This has created hype among the public and many started to try the new network. This has even got more users when they extended the offer for three more months till March 31st.
Time of launch:
It was the correct time for launch as there were no company providing this offer and it was the time when digital India was getting its pace. As the government’s decision in digitalising the country, it has put many people to switch to Jio network.
Launch of the 4G network:
As it was the first in the country to launch the 4G network at a low cost, this new speed network has gained good reviews and credibility to it. Instead of experimenting with 2G and 3G network, they had started their service with 4G network. Before the launch of Jio, less than 15% of people were using 4G and after its launch, there had been a great surge in usage. Their optical fibre network is one of the biggest networks and it helped a lot in providing high-speed 4G network. People were not used to this speed data before and they really liked it.
Launch of Jio phone:
It has launched a phone with features like WhatsApp, Facebook, Internet, online TV in a dial pad phone at a very nominal rate which other companies could not meet with. This has covered the lowest sections of the society who were not much into the digital world.
Customer-centric:
Their ultimate aim was to build up the customer base and not fixing high prices. They did it very nicely and brilliantly. For example, instead of getting a certain amount of 1000 from one user, they are getting it from 10 users of 100 each. By doing so it is easily able to gain more customers.
Their strategy:
1. The attraction of people (providing free data and voice call for 6months)
2. Sustaining their subscribers (Good offers & packs).
3. Providing proper quality service.
FACTUAL DETAILS
1. It has laid more than 2.5 lakh km of fibre optic cables covering 18,000 cities and over one lakh villages.
2. Reliance’s share price had a great rise after its investment in Jio.
3. Jio’s net income is Rs 1,148 crores ($160 million) in FY-2019.
4. Reliance market share is around 32% which is the highest in the telecommunication industry in India.
5. It has generated a profit of Rs 840 crores in 4th quarter of FY-2019.
6. Before Jio, the ranking of India in mobile data usage was 155th but after its launch, India became №2 after China and ahead of the USA.
7. In a month, the total data usage of this company’s subscribers is 100 crores GB.
8. Vodafone-Idea has lost 68 million active subscribers and Airtel had lost 20 million active subscribers. During the same period, the Mukesh Ambani-led Jio’s active subscriber base has expanded by 44 million.
9. It is a company in India which has the highest subscribers of 389.11million (34% of mobile users in India) followed by Airtel with 317.8 million subscribers. Jio has gained the subscribers with 4 years of its establishment which is a very great achievement.
10. According to the report, annual data usage of Jio network was between 17–18 Exabyte (17–18 billion GB) in 2018, which is almost two times growth from 9 Exabyte data usage in FY 2017. Further, the numbers of Reliance offline retail stores are reported to be about 11,000.
11. Before Jio’s entry, it would cost about 150–300 rupees for data but now it has come down to 12 and 14 rupees per GB.
12. Internet speed in India stood at 256kbs/s but now it is about11.46Mb/s.
13. It has also started a Jio Fiber network to the people at a nominal rate.
UPCOMING PROJECTS
1. Reliance Jio has entered into a deal of $5.7 billion with Facebook recently; this will also accelerate e-commerce and Kirana stores business in the country.
2. Jio TV plus is a service which brings all top 10 OTT service provider from all over the world to in one app such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sony liv, Disney plus Hotstar.
3. It has signed deals with semiconductor company Intel for $250 million for developing devices to support 5G network in India.
4. It is working on 5G technology.
5. Jio has raised a whopping sum of Rs115,693.95 crores from leading global investors including Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, ADIA, TPG and L Catterton, Abu Dhabi since April 2020 in just nine weeks.
6. It is planning to introduce an online meeting platform called Jio Meet. It is planning as an alternative to Zoom as there are some security issues with zoom and Jio Meet states as a completely secured platform for the meet.
CONCLUSION
Mukesh Ambani said, “Essentially whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference is going to be talked about”.
He has proved what he said. Jio has been a greater inspiration for many. Its firm decisions, making the proper implementation of projects and their strategy to attract customers plays a key role in their success. With only a few years in the market, it has attracted nearly 400 million subscribers and giving a tough fight to its competitors. Reed Hastings CEO of Netflix said that “we hope someone would do a Reliance Jio in every other country.” Jio has gained greater credibility among the people. It has transformed many lives in India. Its entry in September-2016 led to $10 billion in annual savings for India and a high surge in data consumption. It has brought the internet facilities to a larger population of India. It has taught us a lesson that for any company to be successful the prime goal is to be customer-centric and developing customer base by any means and satisfying their needs at right time and developing their network time to time and implementing new ideas to the world. It is going to play a very key role in the digital world.
