coder_seeker's comments

Two well researched articles on Reliance Industries: it's origins and it's foray into 4G with Jio:

1> https://hind.substack.com/p/reliance-origins/ 2> https://hind.substack.com/p/from-oil-to-jio

> JioMart is just another super Market like DMart(walmart clone). There is nothing new or benefit to end customer. Just another app.

Is JioMart really another super Market like DMart or walmart? From what I understand it is going to connect already existing millions of local mom and pop stores to consumers through whatsapp platform/web for hyper-local delivery in hundreds if not thousands of cities.

This is Definitely a new concept for India and will definitely benefit consumers as they will now have greater choice for online ordering of grocery, fmcg and other products at the press of a button.

> At the moment Ambani's own the government this was pretty much clear when this article came "Reliance’s Jio Institute gets government’s Institution of Eminence status but it’s yet to be set up".

The govt. clarified that Jio institute was selected under Greenfield Category from among 11 institutes that applied based on 4 parameters and was conditionally given letter of intent for Institute of Eminence tag subject to certain milestones to complete within 3 years.

https://www.thequint.com/news/education/jio-institute-of-emi...

Pre-Jio in 2015 and before, I could never understand what was going on in the minds of the top management of telecom companies in India. Why couldn't they think from the point of view of a consumer? I used to wonder hadn't they heard of a Win-Win strategy where both consumers as well as business are happy. At Rs. 250 per GB per month (if you recharged only once every month) how was an average Indian consumer to watch video or play games on the internet. 1 GB quota would be used up in only one or two hour of 1080p youtube watching. It was like if someone sold you a television with cable connection and told that you can watch only for two hours a month. How demeaning and idiotic would that be? How come the top telecom players prior to jio never realized the pent-up demand for video consumption on the internet? It is still a wonder to me. It is this behaviour of the incumbents in 2015 and before that prepared the telecom field for true disruption by Reliance Jio.

> by investing in Jio - Facebook, Google, Qualcomm etc. not only acquire stake in 'The Enterprise' of India but also guaranteed of political favors apart from access to data from millions of Indians through a single unregulated channel.

What about the rest of the dozen investor's including private equity and sovereign funds that have invested in Jio. What political favors could they possibly gain? I think these investor's are mostly looking at multiple rates of return when Jio will IPO either in India or overseas (probably US). It is just a super attractive investment opportunity that is similar to any Silicon Valley High Growth startup.

I totally agree with your reasoning. From purely consumers' point of view, Reliance Jio has been godsend for majority of Indians. One can argue that Pre-jio mobile internet in India was neither of high quality, nor as widely available and most importantly it was definitely NOT affordable. I had in my home in my small town in a backward state in 2015 - BSNL broadband which gave 512 Kbps unlimited usage broadband (or 2 Mbps limited broadband) or airtel 3g which had 2-4 mbps at Rs. 250 per GB. Much before Jio's official launch in September of 2016, I got it's 4g connection in May 1st week of that year. At that time, the condition was to buy one of their crappy 4g mobile phones (around Rs. 5500) sold by Reliance Retail to get their sim as part of beta program whose usage was truly free. The first thing after getting Jio sim I did was speedtest by Ookla - 40 Mbps! - I could'nt believe my eyes. Prior to that I was struggling to get even 4 mbps of decent speed. This beta program had no constraints - No daily limit whatsoever @ 40Mbps. During same month I was travelling by road to the state capital. In one of the remote villages, a thought came to do ookla speedtest. 25Mbps! It indeed was a beginning of a digital revolution. Not by disingenous charity (as Facebook tried to do through Free Basics) but purely by superior technology (all IP 4G network) backed by a hell lot of investment (I think 35 billion USD). When September 2016 came, and Jio was launched officially in 18000 towns and cities simulatenously. The demand was so high, that reliance jio's shops in most cities had long lines of potential customers (which previously I had only heard happens in Apple stores during launch of new products). One of the most innovative business tactics/models that Jio introducted was the per day GB plans. So technically you are getting 168 GB (2 gb per day for 84 days at Rs. 599 - today's price) but no one is gonna use uniformly throughout the month. So much of the GB's remain unused so the networks are not that congested if GBs of data usage was offered without any daily limits.

I watched the whole Jio AGM 2020 presentation. All the board members were present, through video conferencing ofcourse as were the Ambani family members who are the majority shareholders of Reliance Industries and are directors on the various companies' board of the parent group. What nepotism are you talking about? Is RIL a govt entity where it is illegal to appoint one's relative? As majority shareholders they can appoint whomever they want. Two criteria for appointments that come to mind: Trust and Competencies. For the latter they have hired many global as well as Indian executives to run Jio. For eg. Matthew Oomen who is Rel Jio's president was previously Sprint Nextel's CTO.