It seems Reliance Jio the young startup from Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani is growing faster than Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype. The Indian telecom operator has now crossed the 100 million customer milestone. That within five-six months or within 160 days after the official launch in September 2016.
“When we started Jio we set a target of 100 million customers in shortest time. Even we didn’t imagine we will do it in months. Aadhaar enabled us to acquire a million customers a day, which is unheard of in the industry,” said Mukesh Ambani. He was speaking at a session at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2017.
Reliance Jio crossed first 50 million subscribers in just 83 days, thanks to the early preview offer. Then came the Jio Welcome Offer which was offered during the commercial launch. Reliance Industries during the announcement of third quarter result said its telecom arm Jio has garnered around 72.4 million subscribers as on 31st December 2016. The next 30 million subscriber addition took relatively fewer days thanks to the extend free voice and data offer in the name of Happy New Year offer. The operator is now adding subscribers at an average of 6.2 lakh subscribers per day.
“What the Jio platform offers is a partner with the next generation to solve problems for India to make sure our industries are more productive,” Mukesh Ambani said. “To my mind, data is the new natural resource. In that sense, India is blessed with 1.3 billion people, for it to have real value it has to be processed into intelligence. Data is the new oil and its benefit is immense to society. India with its young population will have a competitive advantage”, he added.
The Aadhaar based customer verification really helped Reliance Jio to grab this much subscribers in a short period of time. One can activate their Jio SIM within 15 minutes using the Aadhaar based e-KYC verification.