Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries, has said that Reliance Jio has broken the myth that India is not ready to adopt advanced technology.

In a letter written to the employees of RJio on completion of one year of commercial operations, Ambani said that the telecom operators have crossed 130 million users already. “In this past one year, we have broken several records, both in India and globally. But what gives me the biggest personal satisfaction is to have broken the myth that India is not ready to adopt advanced technology.”

“The way the country has embraced 4G technology and the way it is being used is already a case study for quantum technology leaps,” he added.

Ambani told his employees: “The challenge was not only to launch a new technology and operationalise it in real time across the country, but to make our offering so simple, convenient and compelling that every Indian, in every city, town and village would benefit from it.”

When Mukesh Ambani launched Reliance Jio’s telecom services exactly a year ago, he had spelt out two clear targets for the company.

To make data services affordable to the masses and to disrupt the sector in a way that democratises Internet. A year later, with over 120 million users and 10 per cent market share, RJio has done all that more.

“Users on RJio network consume more data than the combined usage on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the US. We clearly did not expect such a response from Indian users when we started out. But this is just the beginning of what we have to do,” says a top company official.

RJio in its presentation to TRAI had said that “All investments made prior to 2010 have been more than recovered from business and in fact excessive return has been realised on account of IUC charged during last several years.”

Research firm Crisil partly credits RJio with pushing up data usage in India. “Between fiscals 2012 and 2017, India’s mobile data usage per subscriber rocketed at 80 per cent annually to around 1.25 GB per month on increasing adoption of 3G and 4G services, free data offered by Reliance Jio, and a sharp 40 per cent fall in tariffs in the past fiscal alone,” it said in a report.

Company officials said that while the initial phase was focussed on acquiring customers, the next phase will be on rolling out services. “On services, the initial uptake has been for media and entertainment. But now we are piloting services across education, healthcare and payments banking. We will roll out it over the next few months,” said the company official.

The official said that even at lower tariffs, the operations are viable. “At ₹11 per GB, it is a viable operations. We have large capacities on our network so we are looking to ramp up our user base. By 2020 broadband market is expected to be ₹3 lakh crore so it is a big market,” the official added.

With backing of Reliance Industries, RJio may be in a position to wait for profitability, but its biggest test will be in its ability to retain customers, especially after the promotional offers end. At that point, users will have to pay ₹309 per month for accessing data with free voice calls. “There is a lot of pent up demand for data. Even though users may have their existing operator’s SIM cards, their usage has shifted to RJio. This is highly encouraging,” said the company official.

RJio’s entry has disrupted incumbent operators’ business models with most of them reporting losses since last year.

Two of the largest operator Idea Cellular and Vodafone have now been forced to attempt a merger to survive. “The impact on incumbents is short term, Finally, the entire industry will benefit as data consumption rises,” said the RJio official.