The Reliance Jio Master Plan

As I'm pursuing Actuary so my basic work is to prepare the master plans for huge funded policies and projects and we basically do pricing and costing analysis of projects whether these projects are profitable or not. Jio project is one of my studies.

In this post, I will share some facts with verified links so please do verify these facts and figures and if their is any type of mistakes in my research then please let me know.

1). The Indian telecom market - basic facts

1. There are 100 crores mobile subscriptions in India (1 billion)
2. However, only 34% of India’s population is connected to internet
3. Among those using mobile phones, only 10% use 3G data or above
4. If you were a telecom company, you would realize that there isn’t going to be a lot of movement in a voice now. This is because almost all people have mobile phones.

The next big challenge is the internet. Future lies in using data on your mobile phones. Hence, the smartest move now is to invest in building your infrastructure for the future.

Here is why nothing else matters -

When you have data, you don’t care about messaging. Who really uses SMS after the advent of Whatsapp and other such applications?
If the internet speed is reliable, will you not switch to Whatsapp calls, or calling over internet in general? Who cares about the voice network at all?
If any company manages to capture the data penetration in India, they virtually own the telecom sector in the entire country.

Reliance Jio is currently the most suitable contender in the race.

2).What exactly is different about Jio?

The biggest difference between other telecom operators and Jio is their optical fibre network. An optical fibre is better than other cables because the data transfer capacity of optical fibre is very high compared to mobile towers.

Reliance Jio has the longest fibre optic network in the country, ranging over 2.5 lakh kilometers of fibre .

Now, laying down that kind of fibre optics network is not a joke. It requires money.

3). How much money has Jio invested?

Reliance Jio invested ₹ 150,000 Crores ($ 22 billion) into this fibre optic network.

Put this in perspective - this is more than two times the combined investment of Airtel, Idea and Vodafone in the 4G segment (and remember that most of the other investments are not even complete as of now).

Now, if you are investing such a huge sum of money into the market - 4G market - which is still untested in India, how are you expecting to earn profit?

In other words, how exactly will they get back those ₹ 150,000 Crores?

4). The Reliance Jio Master Plan

This is actually a very calculated risk that they are taking. Here is the approach:

Step one - Undercut the market price by giving attractive discounts
Step two - Let everyone switch to Jio for internet use at cheap rates
Step three - Unleash the power of fibre optic network to give super fast
Step four: Grow your subscriber base
Step five: Recover your investment using the large number of users

#Note:- Indians need cheap items,Here jio provides 1 GB data per day at around 399 cost for a month with free voice call but before jio telecom operators provide 1 GB only for around 200 bucks.

If that kind of discounts available then who will not attract towards Jio.

5). Reason behind free voice calls.

Once you have already laid down the fibre optic network, the cost of operating it is not very huge. On the contrary, you can operate the network at minimal cost. Therefore, the only focus is to get more internet users.

If you look at the tariff plan, you will notice that it conforms to the above ideology. They are not charging for the voice calls because they don’t care about voice. In fact, not charging for voice will attract more people towards Jio. After that, they can showcase their data capability.

Their network is capable enough to handle amazing internet speeds. It therefore encourages the users to use internet instead.

What happens when you get hooked on to mobile internet? You basically kill the entire market of your competitors. This is because you have rendered them completely useless (recall that with good data, you don’t need SMS and phone calls - everything can be done through internet).

6). How many subscribers do they need?

They are charging about ₹ 50 per GB of data. Let us assume that their contribution (profit before fixed cost) is ₹ 40 per GB of data. (Even this is on the lower side; per GB cost is actually going to be lesser).

If you do the math, you will be able to realize that if 30% of people in India use 2 GB internet per month, then he can recover the initial investment in 3 years.
Currently, Jio has around 186.6 mn subscribers

In Q4, Jio register 1.2% profit (504 crore) with revenue Revenue rose 3.6% sequentially to Rs 7,128 crore .

Mukesh Ambani’s biggest bet

The whole master plan is based on one single thing: volume.

So, we can say that Mukesh Ambani one more time revolutionized the telecom industry.

Source Links:-

1. India Just Crossed 1 Billion Mobile Subscribers Milestone And The Excitement's Just Beginning

http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2016/01/06/india-just-crossed-1-billion-mobile-subscribers-milestone-and-the-excitements-just-beginning/#3e6e0c8e5ac2

1. India Internet Users

http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/india/

1. Reliance Jio initial investment at Rs150,000 crore: Mukesh Ambani

http://www.livemint.com/Companies/ncT04NLRTtEMDEHAWdMPGN/Reliance-Jio-initial-investment-at-Rs150000-crore-Mukesh-A.html

1. Reliance Jio profit up by 1.2%

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/earnings/reliance-jio-q4-profit-up-1-2-qoq-arpu-falls/articleshow/63942773.cms