India’s most worthy company- Jio started its journey four years ago in 2016 and became the country’s youngest telecom operator. Today, many new ventures of Jio are lined up for launch within a short time span.

Their aim is to make India 2G free. Jio started by providing India with free voicemail services and the internet. The voice calls from Jio to other networks started Costing consumers later. However, on 1 January, 2021 Jio made calls to all other networks free again. In present times, the reliance industries ltd. subsidiary Jio is charging only for the internet that too at cheaper rates in comparison to other telecom networks. Due to which Jio is preferred over the other telecom operators and is the most profitable telecom company with over 400 million subscribers.

This 4G revolution by Mukesh Ambani has carried 70% population of India towards digitalization. As he said, “Before Jio, India was data dark. And now with Jio, India is data shining bright”.

In 2014 Indians’ average data capacity per month was 90 MB. This data went outright to 12 GB data per month. Where the internet sparing was not even the option, Jio changed the complete scenario of India’s digital landscape.

International reach of Jio

Mukesh Ambani’s Jio’s success echoes not only in India but has been a keen center of investment by huge companies internationally.

Earlier, the Whatsapp payment feature was obstructed by the regulators in India. Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio digital business. This makes Facebook a 9.9% stake owner of Jio. How is it related to Whatsapp payments? The Jio e-commerce platforms Jio mart and Facebook-owned Whatsapp will encourage small grocery retailers to make payments through Whatsapp. This won’t be a catch-22 due to India being at number 1 in Whatsapp’s users. Now, this deal made the way for the launch of Whatsapp payments in India. For Jio, it will reduce the debt faced by reliance and stand as strong competition in the online shopping market too.
Google has invested its one of the largest investments in any Indian company. This deal aims to create new affordable smartphones for the nation where over 300 million people have access to smartphones. These smartphones are intended to be launched by March 2021. Google now owns a 7.7% stake in Jio after investing $4.5 billion in the company.
Qualcomm invested $97 million in jio slightly lesser than other tech giants. Qualcomm is a company that works on developing wireless technology. The company’s partnership with the biggest telecom player will help it to roll out its 5G services to a large population.
Another US semiconductor giant Intel invested $253.4 million in Jio.

These were the largest continuous fundraises by any company globally. The big tech giants like Qualcomm and intel intended to partner with Mukesh Ambani because of the future ambitions of his company.

Jio Platforms has already made significant investments in a range of services including broadband connectivity, smart devices, cloud and edge computing, artificial intelligence, internet of things, smart devices, blockchain, and even augmented reality. Mukesh Ambani ventures to bring 5G technology by 2021. The idea of bringing this revolution has driven other big firms to invest in Jio.

The first investor in the line who is interested in the ventures of Jio:

A US-based private investment firm Silver Lake, focused on the technology sector, was the first overseas firm to announce the investment in the two RIL companies that are Reliance Retail and Jio. At first, it invested with a stake of 1.75%. With the second investment, the stake went up to 2.13%.

Reliance already had a joint venture with IMG (sports and event management company) in which this private equity firm holds a large stake.

“Silver Lake has an outstanding record of being a valuable partner for leading technology companies globally. Silver Lake is one of the most respected voices in technology and finance. We are excited to leverage insights from their global technology relationships for the Indian Digital Society’s transformation,” RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said.

“Jio Platforms is one of the world’s most remarkable companies, led by an incredibly strong and entrepreneurial management team who are driving and actualizing a courageous vision. They have brought extraordinary engineering capabilities to bear on bringing the power of low-cost digital services to a mass consumer and small businesses population,” Egon Durban, Silver Lake Co-CEO and Managing Partner said.

Making office meeting and classes possible in 3 dimensions:

Jio in terms of digitalization has taken a step ahead with the launch of its latest innovation Jio glass. Jio glass is a headset with the principle of mixed reality. It will let people not only interact digitally face to face but also let the person feel the presence of the other. It weighs only 75g. Demoes holographic 3D video conferencing is claimed as one of its top features.

It will be provided with a convenient cable. Jio glass already has 25 built-in apps to allow augmented reality video meetings.

12 OTT platforms and live shows made available as new ventures of Jio:

The users of the Jio fiber set-top-box will now be able to watch content from 12 different OTT platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ Hotstar, Sony Liv, Zee5, Jiocinema, Jiosaavn, Youtube, Eros Now, and many others on Jio tv plus. The Jio app store present in the tv will allow users to access all its applications and run tv shows and movies through them. Jio tv plus also has a voice search feature.

The new operating system in making:

Jio tie-ups with google to create smartphones for the people of India. Therefore, Jio also ventures to create an android based entry-level smartphone operating system. This plan will boost the prime minister of India’s motto for self-reliant India as currently the android market is dominated by Chinese brands like Vivo and oppo.

Working on connecting devices of other organizations:

Reliance Jio will be working with Realme and other smartphone manufacturers to lower the 2G mobile phones. It’s time that people still using the 2G handsets need to switch to 4G and 5G handsets. To do so the devices need to be made affordable as said by Sunil Dutt, Reliance Jio’s president for devices and mobility. He said Jio is not only strategizing at their mobile phone segment but also working at other connecting devices.

A new addition to the MyJio platform soon:

Reliance Jio service app MyJio app is said to be added with a new service. Jio is trying to elevate its offering through Jio payments bank. Though not much has been disclosed about this feature, the company acclaimed it to be like a digital saving bank and people have to watch it for surprises. The digital savings account will be available only for android users. Though, the Jio payment app is available for android, ios, and windows phones.

Jio payments bank might be expected to come as a mini-application. Applications like Jiomart, Jiosavan, Jiochat, and others are currently available on the myjio platform.

Ambani’s paid all the debts?

With more than 10 overseas firms, investment in Jio has helped RIL to become debt-free.

RIL chairman said that the total money raised by the RIL through a rights issue, Jio Platforms and BP stood at Rs 212,809 crore.

“Reliance is now truly a zero Net Debt company, well ahead of my goal of March 2021. It has an extremely strong Balance Sheet that will support growth plans for its three Hyper-Growth Engines — Jio, Retail, and O2C,” he said.

Conclusion

Mukesh Ambani started Jio by distributing its free sims. Now Jio is the most prominent network in India partnering with various overseas firms. Jio has launched its plans to enhance the digital lifestyle of India. As Reliance bought the 4G revolution, it is all set to pioneer the 5G revolution soon in India.

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