MUKESH Ambani Launches Free Telephony & E-commerce Business Platform
NOT worried about reported cooperation among Airtel, Vodafone and Idea in improving digital connectivity, Mumbai based Mukesh Ambani led conglomerate has announced a new scheme to further improve telecom services in India by providing mobile telephony with free voice calls and cheap data. At the Annual General body Meeting (AGM) of shareholders on Friday in India’s financial capital, Mukesh Ambani, 61, born to Gujarati parents and leading India’s richest corporate house, unfolded an ultra high-speed fixed line fibre broadband for homes and enterprises across 1,100 cities plus an e-commerce platform that may rival likes of US headquartered Amazon and Walmart having businesses in India.His claims that the innovative scheme along with the strengthening of his prime concerns energy and petrochemicals businesses will undoubtedly pitchfork the size of oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries to USD 125 billion by 2025.Prospectiveve customers can start registering for the fixed line broadband from August 15 but no launch date has been made public as yet. The service will be through one fibre provide high-speed internet, ultra high definition entertainment on large screen TVs, multi-party video conferencing, voice-activated virtual assistance, virtual reality gaming and digital shopping as well as smart home solutions.Jio GigaFiber will offer ultimate broadband experience to surf, stream, game, and work, because of its ultra-fast upload and download speeds and effective functioning in milliseconds, he added. It will come directly to homes unlike in most cases where the fibre reaches only until the building and the last few meters of end connectivity is done using the traditional cable drastically reducing the speed and user experience due to patches and inferior cable qualities of such patch up, Ambani said.Jio Reliance’s telecom service firm claims the move is intended to put India alongside top five nations in fixed-line broadband in the coming year. But he has not revealed pricing for the new service.”We are currently running beta trials in tens of thousands of homes. While India has pole-vaulted into global leadership in the mobile broadband space… We still lag behind significantly in fixed-line broadband. India is ranked quite low at 134th in the global ranking for fixed broadband. Poor fixed-line infrastructure has been a key reason for this,” he said.With over Rs 2,50,000 crore invested in digital infrastructure for providing mobile and broadband connectivity across India , fibre broadband connectivity will now reach homes.Jio’s launch in September 2016 has already made India the highest mobile data consuming nation. He also announced second-generation JioPhone with added features like QWERTY keypad and messaging services like Whatsapp, Facebook, and YouTube. The phone will be available for booking from August 15 for Rs 2,999. This would be in addition to the JioPhone, which will continue to be available on payment of a Rs 1,500 refundable security deposit. Old feature phones can be exchanged for the new JioPhone for just Rs 501 under the new offering called Jio ‘Monsoon Hungama’.Jio customer base has doubled to 215 million, and 25 million JioPhone sold.The target is to achieve 100 million JioPhone users in shortest span of time, he said.”Reliance has reached an inflection point,” he said. “As the Golden Decade rolls on, our consumer businesses will contribute nearly as much to the overall earnings of the company as our energy and petrochemical businesses”. The business tycoon with net worth valued at 4,060 crore INR ,say as India starts on its high growth journey to double the size of its economy by 2025. “I assure you that the size of Reliance will more than double in the same period,” he confidently .Jio has enabled data usage grown from 125 crore GBs per month to more than 240 crore GBs per month making India the world’s largest mobile data network.”As Reliance transitions to become a technology platform company, we see our biggest growth opportunity in creating a hybrid, online-to-offline new commerce platform,” he said.”We shall create this by integrating and synergizing the power of Reliance Retail’s physical marketplace with the fabulous strengths of Jio’s digital infrastructure and services.”Reliance Retail with 350 million footfalls last year at its 7,500 stores is the largest, fastest growing and most profitable retail company in India, he said. The multibillionaire firm’s core businesses, he said, is nearing the end of its largest-ever investment with the commissioning of world’s largest Paraxylene complex, petcoke gasification project and an off-gas cracker, and planned the start of a Butyl rubber project later this year.”As the world migrates from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we will further maximize this Oil to Chemicals conversion and upgrade all of our fuels to high-value petrochemicals.Reliance and its partner BP are working to produce 30-35 million standard cubic meters per day of gas from satellite fields in KG-D6 block by 2022. Shloka Mehta, would -be daughter-in-law of the richest Indian, made her debut at the 41st AGM of Reliance Industries founded by visionary Dhirubhai Ambani. Mukesh’s mother Kokilaben and his wife Nita Ambani, established sports administrator, were among those attended the AGM.
