The Jio Revolution?
In November 2019, Reliance Jio also went past incumbents Vodafone-Idea (337 million subscribers) and Bharti Airtel (326 million) to become the country’s largest telecom operator, according to a TRAI report. If people thought that this was the crowning achievement for the 5-year old startup, they were proved wrong in a matter of a few months. This article will detail the stunning conquests of the startup in 2020.
Jio took the first step towards becoming a technology company rather than just a telecom operator in February 2020. It unveiled its connected car technologies at an auto-expo. This marked Jio’s entry into the field of Internet of Things. The company would provide a vehicle tracking system for transport providers and logistics companies.
The real salvo was fired by the company amid the corona pandemic in late April with the announcement of the Jio-Facebook deal. The mammoth size of this deal, a whopping $5.7 billion or Rs 43,574 crore invested by Facebook, thus acquiring a 9.9% stake in Reliance Jio. This was the largest Foreign Direct Investment for a minority stake, in India. This deal instantly grabbed eyeballs, both domestic and global. Other companies like Silver Lake Partners, Vista Equity, and General Atlantic also picked up minority stakes in the company within two weeks.
These investments put Jio among the top 5 listed companies in India by market capitalization, within three and a half years of the launch of commercial services. But more important was Jio’s gradual evolution into a technology company. It has forayed into technologies such as broadband, smart devices, cloud, and edge computing, Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented and Mixed Reality as well as Blockchain. It believes that these technologies will give it the edge in this new decade.
While it was focusing on aggressive expansion, Jio did not lose sight of its core business during the coronavirus pandemic. According to the company, there was minimal impact on its services due to the COVID19 lockdown. Technologies like automation and virtualization had been deployed to deal with the absence of staff. The company has seen a 21% increase in data traffic since lockdown has been imposed. This directly translates to a “surge of up to 17 crore GB per day”. These technologies also ensured that the expected data traffic surge on the networks was handled with a combination of capacity augmentation and technology.
“We are glad that we have made connectivity and operations easier for our customers in these difficult times. Every Jio employee is trained to think Customer First and that has resulted in overwhelming customer response as we are serving close to 40 crore Indians now. Jio continues to lead the digital revolution in India and the whole-hearted acceptance of our services motivates us to keep improving every day,” says Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited.
To facilitate customers working from home, Jio offered a host of subscription plans for both Jio Fiber and its JioPhone recharges. The telecom firm has also introduced the Jio Associate program that lets any user recharge for their friends, family or acquaintance and earns while doing so. It also partnered with Microsoft for collaboration platforms that enabled Work-From-Home, Learn-From-Home, and Health-At-Home for Jio users in the country. Jio and Haptik also powered the Government of India’s official helpdesk for the Coronavirus.
Jio’s latest venture- JioMart is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the Jio — Facebook deal. With this deal, Jio will use WhatsApp to popularize JioMart. Using WhatsApp as the medium, JioMart aims to bring to customers, the nearby “Kirana” shops on an online platform. Customers will be able to browse items and order on the platform itself. Delivery will be within 2 days, an obvious competition to Grofers and BigBasket. The local Kirana shops will have access to a platform with a wide range of customers. With JioMart, the company wants to move farmers online to sell their products and boost their business which was impacted due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“In the very near future, JioMart, Jio’s digital new commerce platform, and WhatsApp will empower nearly 3 crores small Indian Kirana shops to digitally transact with every customer in their neighborhood. This means all of you can order and get faster delivery of day-to-day items, from nearby local shops. At the same time small Kiranas can grow their businesses and create new employment opportunities using digital technologies,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd., in a video message.
How does Facebook benefit from providing WhatsApp as a platform for the local shops?
JioMart allows people to pay for their orders through WhatsApp Pay. This new payments-service got approval from the National Payments Corporation of India in February. Facebook which has been experimenting with Libra, its cryptocurrency unit, will surely look to incorporate Libra into WhatsApp Pay. JioMart offers it a wide market for its new service.
It is clear that not only has Jio emerged unscathed from the pandemic, but it is also now better prepared to become India’s newest technology behemoth. It remains to see what is the next step for this dynamic company.
