Reliance Jio SIM card activation: Lack of e-KYC facility is a setback for RIL's target of 100 million users

Reliance Jio is making waves across India with its attractive free data and voice calling offers and using this trial as a way to add millions of subscribers. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has targeted 100 million customers by the end of this year, but is everything going as planned? Not so far.

RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani had expected to add one million customers each day using e-KYC facility to reach the target of 100 million subscribers before Jio's commercial launch. However, lack of e-KYC machines across India has reportedly slowed down Jio SIM activations.

Talking to The Hindu, an anonymous Reliance Jio employee said that Jio has added more than five million subscribers, including those in the initial preview offer, so far and it is adding nearly over five lakh customers on a daily basis. While the daily additions from across the country seem massive, it is merely half the number RIL had aimed for.

"We want to add five million customers a week or 20 million a month, but (we are) facing difficulty in activating so many customers at the backend," a Jio official told The Hindu. "For e-KYC customers, we can activate connection in a couple of hours if you come with your Aadhaar card," the official added.

Sadly, e-KYC facility is available only in Delhi and Mumbai, while other metro cities such as Bengaluru are yet to get the equipments. By installing e-KYC facility in all Reliance Digital, Xpress and Xpress mini stores, Jio can address the activation issues that the customers are currently facing.

After waiting for several days to get a Jio SIM, users have complained that activations are taking equally long. With e-KYC, the activation process can be taken online and customers can walk out of a Reliance store with a working Jio SIM, provided they submit a valid Aadhaar card for proof.

How does e-KYC for Jio SIM activation work?

The process of taking "Know Your Customer" process completely online is e-KYC. Customers will need to submit their Aadhaar number and the fingerprint of that customer will be taken to match with the Aadhaar database to complete verification. This process speeds up the activation of Jio SIM cards and eliminates the hardships of following a paper trial for every SIM card application.