"Today, Jio is going to reinvent the conventional feature phone. With a revolutionary device, an unmatched Indian innovation, Made in India, by young Indians and for all Indians," RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said during the 40th annual general meeting (AGM) last month.
JioPhone was launched in India on July 21 and proudly presented by Ambani as "India ka intelligent smartphone". The main highlight of the JioPhone launch was the fact that it would be given for free with a refundable deposit of Rs. 1,500 and its competitive tariffs keeping in mind 50 crore feature phone users in India.
The free voice calls, low data tariffs for the free JioPhone overshadowed a minor fact about the "India ka smartphone." While JioPhone will be available on pre-orders starting August 24 and will be up for grabs in early September, the JioPhones will be made in India Q4 2017 onwards.
"And from the last quarter of this year, all JioPhones will be made in India. We are targeting to have 5 million JioPhones available every week," Ambani had said during his speech during AGM.
According to a recent report by Phone Radar, the initial batch of JioPhones will be imported from China. Unless you are hell-bent on buying a JioPhone that has the label "Made in India", this is not going to be a major concern. In fact, there are several OEMs in India that initially import phones from China until necessary arrangements have been made for local production or assembly in the country.
International Business Times, India, has reached out to Reliance Jio for a comment on this. We'll update when we hear back.
The "Make in India" initiative is widely accepted and executed by international brands such as Xiaomi, Samsung, OPPO, Vivo and recently Apple. The core parts required to build a phone are normally imported from China and assembled in India. This earns the phone a label of "made in India," which serves the main purpose of PM Modi's initiative to promote local production and create local jobs.
Ambani has actively shown support to various government initiatives for the betterment of the country. In fact, the launch of Reliance Jio was perfectly aligned with the government's vision for a "Digital India". In a short span of 6 months since Jio's launch, India has overtaken USA and China in mobile data usage, and it is ranked number 1 in mobile data consumption. Jio users along have consumed over 125 crore GB worth of 4G data every month.
With JioPhone, RIL is aiming to digitally enable majority of feature phone users, which are estimated at 50 crore out of 78 crore total mobile phone users. Reliance Jio is committed to making India truly digital by offering connectivity, data affordability and device affordability.
Even if JioPhones are imported from China initially, Ambani as guaranteed the phones will be produced in the country starting October. We are guessing the second batch of JioPhones will be made locally.
