Reliance Jio is already the most talked-about company, at least in the telecom world, thanks to its generous free 4G data and voice calls offering. Anything that's free has an appeal and when something that's used every day becomes free, it is a runaway success.
Reliance Jio became the first telecom company to offer both data and calls for free to its users, a formula that helped the carrier reach supreme heights of success in a short span. According to an informed source, Mukesh Ambani-led Jio has crossed 50 million users as of November 26, ET reported.
If we put that into perspective, that's 6 lakh customers a day or almost a thousand users per minute joining the new telecom's circle ever since it started operations on September 5, 2016. The company's target is to achieve 100 million by the end of March 2017, a milestone which no longer seems bizarre.
How is Jio able to pull off such a stint?
That's the question lingering the great minds of rivals such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and other telcos in India, as well as some curious folks in the country of 1.3 billion people. The secret has been out from day one – understanding the basic necessities of people and giving them what they need in the most efficient manner.
We all use our phones to make calls, send messages and browse the internet, which includes social networking, messaging, VoIP calling and much more. All that Jio did was giving users all of it for free. Now, almost two months down the line, Jio is breaking records like no other company in the world.
In the back-end, Jio is fighting the battles of fetching necessary interconnect points from incumbent telcos. On the consumer-end, the company is trying its best to give the experience of a lifetime without charging a penny.
Jio has a strong 4G presence in India with the highest quantum of 4G spectrum across 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands. This gives the telco an edge over rivals and it chooses to do what it wants with that – In this case giving the people of India a cost-free mobile internet service for a limited time.
In addition to free VoLTE calls, 4G LTE data, 100 SMS per day, Jio is also keeping its users entertained with Jio apps. The company has a wide range of apps such as JioCinema, JioTV, JioPlay, JioBeats, JioMags, JioNews, JioOnDemand and more, to bring pretty much everything a user would require in his everyday life.
All these services are offered for free for 3 months and now rumours have it that the company might extend it by another 90 days. Who's to stop this fairly new telco from outperforming the giants of the Indian telecom industry then? Only time will tell.
