Will Reliance Jio stay atop in the telco race amid tough competition from rivals?

It's safe to assume that it is because of Jio that the current telco market is offering affordable high-speed mobile internet and voice calls. For a good part of over six months, the Mukesh Ambani-run telecom firm gave away unlimited 4G data, voice calls, national roaming and SMS for free of cost. This resulted in rapid growth of the new telco, adding millions of 4G users to the market in a very short span of time.

In fact, Reliance Jio's phenomenal growth made it the fastest growing tech company in the world, beating giants like Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype and others. The growth of the new telco hit a road bump in April when it started subscription-based service for the first time under the Jio Prime membership umbrella. Contrary to what analysts predicted, Jio continued to add more subscribers than any of its rivals, including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and others.

The latest remark by the company suggested that it had 138.6 million users, which is quite an impressive feat for a company that's just one year old. But that success came at a price, and as per the company's first financial results for the quarter ended September 2017, that's a massive Rs. 270.59 crore.

Many would say that the new telco would be more cautious in its future offerings, but Jio defied the notion with a Diwali-special Rs. 399 Dhan Dhana Dhan offer. As a part of the limited period scheme, users would get 100 percent cashback in the form of eight Rs. 50 vouchers. Sadly, the offer ended on October 18.

But it seems like that's the extent of being generous. On October 19, Reliance Jio revised most of its plans and the change isn't very Jio-like.

The new Rs. 459 plan as you see above is basically the old Rs. 399 plan. Users get 1GB 4G data, unlimited voice calls and access to MyJio apps for 84 days. The original Rs. 399 plan comes with the same benefits, but with a reduced validity of 70 days. Similar changes were made to Rs. 509, Rs. 999 and Rs. 1,999 plans.

The timing of this change coinciding with the loss-laden financial results for the telco doesn't paint a very good picture. That said, Jio shouldn't be too concerned as its offers still outbid those of its rivals.

Let's take Airtel and Vodafone for instance. Airtel has a Rs. 399 plan for prepaid subscribers where it offers 1GB data per day along with unlimited calls and 100 SMS for 28 days.

Similarly, Vodafone recently introduced a Rs. 399 plan where users get 90GB 4G data with unlimited calls for a period of six months. By calculation, users get 15GB per month as compared to Jio's 28GB for 28 days. But the effort is surely a game-changer for Vodafone, which has excluded itself from the race for far too long.

These are challenging times and it is yet to be seen how the telecom industry evolves. Reliance Jio might have some tricks up its sleeve, but we are yet to see them. Even the rivals are upping their game, so it will be interesting to see how the competition evolves in the days to come.