After telecom, Reliance Jio plans to disrupt video streaming market

Reliance Jio has disrupted the Indian mobile telecom market with its ultra-cheap data packs and unlimited voice calling benefits. Now, the company is looking forward to taking on the Internet and video streaming giants like Google, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Spotify. According to an article in the winter 2019 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, "the second stage of Ambani's plan is more ambitious"

"Jio's real competitors aren't local cellular providers, such as Airtel or Vodafone India; instead, insiders say Ambani has long had his eyes set on competing with Google, Netflix, Spotify, and Facebook," read the article. Now Jio is also offering lifestyle products, a streaming TV service along with hundreds of channels, a digital payment app, a music library, a health care app, a connected home system and also a messaging platform.

"Each of these could reach Jio's growing customer base in a multitude of Indian languages," the article added. Last week the company reported a 65 per cent increase in its net profit of the October-December 2018 window. The third quarter profit of the company was Rs 831 crore in the financial year 2018-2019. In the financial year 2017-2018 the profit was Rs 504 crore.

"The journey of Jio has been truly remarkable and has surpassed all expectations."The Jio family is now 280 million strong and growing on one of the world's largest mobile data networks, in line with our vision of connecting everyone and everything, everywhere -- always at the highest quality and the most affordable price," said Ambani.

Ambani said that India can be transformed when people get "Pehla TV, pehla camera, pehla Internet and pehla Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- at just Rs 100 per month". "Every phone in India will be a 4G-enabled phone and every customer will have access to 4G connectivity," he added.

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