Reliance jio: An Indian Telecom Diaspora

Abstract

The telecom sector has redefined the world boundaries. In India, the journey of the telecom sector from Telstra, MTNL, BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to Jio has amazing transition points. Jio's entry in the telecom market brought disruption amongst other players operating in the market and as a result, in the year 2020 Jio has become the market leader in the telecom service provider category. The telecom sector has transformed from the pager system to cellular systems. The change from 1G to 4G has changed the life of many people in the world. This revolution in India was brought by Reliance Jio wherein they upgraded Indian the market from 3G services to 4G services. They have a great plan to move to 5G in the near future. The company that now has the maximum share in the telecom sector of 32.04% entered the market by providing free internet and calling services. The main idea of the company was to expand itself in each part of the company. The target audience for the company was the young generation with maximum usage of mobile services with highly price elastic demand. To widen the market by catering to the low-income group of consumers with a higher level of utility they launched Jio Smart Phone with the brand name of LYF. This phone had almost all the features of an expensive smartphone but the price of these phones was kept low to attract target customers. Initially, Jio services were offered for free and in a later stage, the company charged nominal prices for the services. Later in November 2019, the company increased the prices for its services and now it has plans to expand into DTH services, Financial Instruments, Jio Phones, etc. The authors have made an attempt to dwell deeper into Jio's strategic approach to disrupt the telecom industry and to compel the competitors and the telecom regulatory body (TRAI) to set new rules of the game.