By Akhil Gore

Mukesh Ambani has surged past Europe's wealthiest man, making him the world's fourth-richest person. Reliance Industries Ltd.'s chairman is now worth $80.6 billion, after amassing $22 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

When the whole world is on the rest on money exchange programme, Reliance Jio managed to get investment a giant investment of  $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake from Google. Reliance Industries also became the first to get investment from three major companies including Apple and Facebook. But, what are the main reasons behind Reliance Jio brand success?

Jio’s marketing strategy.

India had a low data speed, poor connectivity and high prices for the data packs used by people. That’s when Jio struck with bountiful and affordable data being made available in every part of the country. Reliance JIO also has the largest Fiber Optic Network in the country which helps them provide such speedy data.

Adding a twist to their launch story they provided 3 months of unlimited free calls, 4GB of free data usage per day at 4G speeds, free SMS and thus roping in many consumers. Statistics say the firm acquired 50 million subscribers in just 83 days of its launch. And it had about 215 million subscribers by July 2018.They have always concentrated on increasing their volume (more subscribers). Rather than charging Rs. 10000 from one consumer they used the technique of charging Rs. 1000 each from 10 consumers, thus increasing their base volume of customers.

 

Jio Campaigns

Jio’s first ever campaign was launched in the light of giving wings to our Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for Digital India. They said, “Jio is a dedication to that Digital India dream of the Prime Minister, his vision for the 1.2 billion people of India.”

Similarly, other campaigns with slogans like “Now India will fly. Jio is here.” Featuring Shahrukh Khan and introducing Jio Prime with a bunch of youngsters singing “Hoyenga hoyenga continue hoyenga” which was to introduce their amazing offers post the unlimited free period.

INVESTMENT

The recent investment today from Google is one of the rare instances when the Android-maker has joined its globle rival Facebbook in backing a firm. Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, which has amassed more than 400 million subscribers in less than four years of its existence, in April this year for a 9.99% stake in it. Facebook is the largest minority stakeholder in Jio Platforms.

Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industiries (India’s most valued firm) has raised about $20.2 billion in the past four months from 13 investors by selling about 33% stake in the firm. 

Advantage spectrum

Here’s something that Reliance did way back in June 2010: it bought out a company called Infotel Broadband Services for $1 billion,shortly after ending a non-compete pact with brother Anil Ambani.

The move was significant — Infotel was the only firm in India to win low-frequency broadband spectrum in all 22 telecom circles in the country, and Reliance snapped it up within hours of the auction ending.

Thanks to this deal, and some strategic planning and investments over the years, Reliance now has pan-India 4G coverage that exceeds every other operators 4G coverage. Others, however, have already made expensive investments in 2G and 3G first. 

Our own testing backs this up too. In New Delhi’s East Delhi neighbourhood, the average download speed on Airtel’s 4G network never managed to go beyond 5 Mbps. On Jio? A consistent 25 Mbps.