Reliance Industries Limited chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani addressed board members, shareholders and millions of customers across the country during the company's 41st Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Thursday.
Ambani highlighted the achievements of RIL's various business sectors, including Reliance Jio, Reliance Retail, media and entertainment, hydrocarbons business, oil and gas exploration and production, and Reliance Foundation. Since Reliance Jio has become a household name ever since it disrupted the telecom industry.
Here's the full text of Ambani's speech on Jio, JioPhone, JioPhone 2 and GigaFiber.
Dear Friends,
I want to start with Reliance Jio – Our Digital Services Initiative.
Since I last spoke, we have doubled our customer base to over 215 million now. 215 million customers within 22 months of start is a record that no technology company has been able to achieve anywhere in the world.
In the last one year, we have achieved unprecedented growth starting with an already existing large base:
Data usage has grown from 125 crore GBs per month to more than 240 crore GBs per month.
We were the world's largest mobile data network last year and the gap from the others has only widened in the last 12 months.
Voice usage on the network has grown from 250 crore minutes per day to more than 530 crore minutes per day.
The amount of video consumption has grown from 165 crore hours per month to more than 340 crore hours per month.
Doubling of these metrics at such scale is truly unparalleled.
Our customers are actively engaged with us for more than 290 minutes per day on an average.
Friends,
Jio's motto is simple: We are determined to connect everyone and everything, everywhere – always at the highest quality and the most affordable price.
Like our customer metrics, our NETWORK also CONTINUES to expand rapidly.
In terms of coverage, our network has a wider coverage than any other network in India. We are on track towards achieving our target of 99% population coverage with 4G-LTE. This means that Jio will be present in every district, taluk, gram panchayat and village of India.
When it comes to capacity, over the past 12 months, we have more than doubled our network capacity. Even after serving the needs of our 215+ million customers, the capacity utilization of the Jio network is less than 20%. Which means, we can multiply our customer base without additional investment.
We have achieved this unprecedented network growth while maintaining our number one position as the fastest network in India... as attested by the TRAI speed-test data for each and every month of the past year.
We recognize that just around 1% of our customers are yet to enjoy the best user experience some of the time. But we are working tirelessly to satisfy and delight them as well. Jio is a customer obsessed organization and will work harder to ensure that not even one consumer remains dissatisfied on our network.
Let me now update you about the JIOPHONE.
JioPhone has taken the country by storm.
I am pleased to announce that we have more than 25 million JioPhone users in India. We are now taking the JioPhone to the next level, with added capabilities and functionalities.
Friends,
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.
In countries with better-developed communication infrastructure, more than 80% of data consumption happens indoors through fixed-line connectivity in homes, in offices and other premises. Optical Fiber-based fixed-line broadband is the future.
Fixed-line broadband offers hundreds of megabits, even gigabits per second of data speeds. Jio is determined to move India to among the top 5 in fixed-line broadband, too.
Your company has already invested over Rs 250,000 crore for creating state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to provide mobile and broadband connectivity across the country, with the largest fiber footprint.
We will now extend this fiber connectivity to homes, merchants, small and medium enterprises and large enterprises simultaneously across 1,100 cities to offer the most advanced fiber-based broadband connectivity solutions.
For the home, this will mean:
Ultra high-definition entertainment on your large screen TVs
Multi-party video conferencing from the comfort of your living room
Voice-activated virtual assistants who obey your every command
Virtual reality gaming and digital shopping where you are magically transported into a digital universe of immersive experiences
Smart-home solutions where hundreds of devices like security cameras, home appliances even lights and switches can be securely controlled by their owners using a smartphone from both inside and outside the home.
This will redefine 24X7 emergency help for all homes.
For merchants and small businesses, fixed-line broadband means:
When you combine fixed-line connectivity and cloud applications with the agility and customer obsession of a small owner-driven business you empower them to compete on level terms with larger businesses.
Jio is thus performing a task of vital national importance because the success of Indian small businesses and small merchants translates directly into faster and more sustainable growth with large-scale employment for the Indian economy.
Likewise, for large enterprises, fixed-line broadband will mean:
Having the ability to compete in the global marketplace using digital tools and techniques that are powering the fourth industrial revolution. We are calling this fiber-based broadband service Jio GigaFiber.
Dear Friends,
The three most popular apps YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook will be available to all the JioPhone users from 15th August.
Jio was born with a purpose - to transform India with the power of the Digital Revolution. For this vision to be realised, every Indian must become a digital Indian.
However, as many as 500 million Indians still use feature phones, who cannot use the Internet. The doors of Digital Life are closed to them because of the problem of affordability. Which is why, last year we offered the JioPhone – India Ka Smartphone – for a fully refundable deposit of Rs 1500. In other words, for an effective price of zero.
25 million Indians have availed this scheme and become JioPhone users. This scheme will, of course, continue. Today we are introducing another attractive offer to feature phone users.
It is the JIOPHONE "MONSOON HUNGAMA" offer.
Starting July 21st... they can exchange their existing feature phone for a brand new JIOPHONE for just Rs 501! We have thus reduced the effective entry cost of the JioPhone from Rs 1500 to as low as Rs 501.
Starting 15th August, our JioPhone2 will be available at an introductory price of only Rs 2999.
Our purpose is to accelerate the Digital Revolution in India with the extreme affordability of a JioPhone, so that each and every Indian can access the internet and enjoy the Digital Life.
Further details about both these offers will soon be made available on jio.com.
With the added functionalities, our wider network reach across India and strong retail presence across India, the goal that I have now set for our Jio team is to enable 100 MILLION users on this JioPhone platform in the shortest possible time.
Friends,
JioGigaFiber creates magical experiences that are going to be available to every Indian consumer.
So, when will Jio GigaFiber be available?
We are currently running beta trials in tens of thousands of homes. Starting this Independence Day, August 15th you can start registering your interest for JioGigaFiber through both MyJio and Jio.com.
We will prioritize our JioGigaFiber rollout to those localities from where we receive the highest number of registrations.
JIOGIGAFIBER will be the largest greenfield fixed-line broadband rollout anywhere in the world, with rollout happening in 1,100 cities of India simultaneously. So, this 15th of August, Jio welcomes you to celebrate the day of India's Freedom by signing in for every Indian's Digital Freedom.
Make sure you register your interest, and more importantly make sure that your neighbors register so that your locality will be among the first to get Jio GigaFiber!
At Jio, we are determined to take India to be among the top-5 in broadband connectivity, both for mobility as well as fiber based wireline connectivity.
We have built future proof networks and will continue to deliver the most advanced technologies to our customers for decades to come.
With Jio, we have built a Digital Connectivity Platform of unparalleled capacity and a nation-wide reach. This has enabled Reliance to strategically reinvent itself as a Technology Platform Company.
Digital platforms have become the new-age factories and service providers. These new hyper-growth engines of value creation are fired by the combination of digital connectivity, computing power and software.
They use data as the raw material, and Artificial Intelligence plays the role that electricity played in the past.
The world is entering into an era of Anytime Value-Creation, Everywhere Value-Creation, and Value-Creation by anyone who has a smart business idea.
I am happy to inform you that your company has prepared itself for this exciting future of non-linear and exponential growth.
Watch the full AGM speech by Mukesh Ambani below:
