India Before & After JIO — Transcript

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1. 0:00Imagine you spend 10 years and hundreds of crores of rupees building a tea
2. 0:04shop that can serve the entire city at once.
3. 0:07And the moment you open it, you make tea completely free for the next 12 months.
4. 0:12While your competitors charge ₹10 for a tiny cup of tea, you offer a
5. 0:17much larger cup for absolutely nothing.
6. 0:19Your competitors laugh at you.
7. 0:20They say your business will shut down within four days.
8. 0:24But now, watch carefully what happens next.
9. 0:26During the first week, people come just to try it because it is free.
10. 0:31After all, what do they have to lose?
11. 0:33Someone who used to drink one cup a day now drinks three.
12. 0:37Three or four months later, it becomes a habit.
13. 0:40Then, one day, you change the signboard.
14. 0:42Tea is no longer free, but it costs just ₹2, significantly less than what
15. 0:47other shops charge, and the quantity is much larger.
16. 0:50Now, the entire city wants three times as much tea, and everyone has become
17. 0:54accustomed to drinking it.
18. 0:56But you are the only one with a kitchen capable of producing that much tea.
19. 1:01Demand has suddenly multiplied, but only one shop can supply it.
20. 1:04This is not a story about tea.
21. 1:06This is the story of a company that completely transformed the way India uses
22. 1:11the internet and earned the trust of 530 million people in just 10 years.
23. 1:16Jio.
24. 1:16Welcome, this is Vaibhav, and you are watching the premium side of YouTube.
25. 1:20This story does not begin in 2016.
26. 1:22It begins with a postcard.
27. 1:24There is something that has often been said about Dhirubhai Ambani.
28. 1:28His dream was that one day, a phone call in India would become cheaper
29. 1:32than a postcard.
30. 1:33Back then, this idea sounded crazy because owning a phone and making a call were luxuries.
31. 1:38Consider the comparison from 1995.
32. 1:40An ordinary postcard cost 15 paise, while a mobile phone call cost ₹16.80 per minute.
33. 1:45And that was not all.
34. 1:47You had to pay for outgoing calls as well as incoming calls.
35. 1:50People would give missed calls to communicate with each other so they could avoid getting charged.
36. 1:56Dhirubhai Ambani's thinking was simple.
37. 1:57If communication remained accessible only to the wealthy, the country would never progress.
38. 2:02Because if you do not have access to information, you do not have access
39. 2:06to opportunities either.
40. 2:07This vision led to the creation of Reliance Infocomm.
41. 2:10However, Dhirubhai Ambani passed away in July 2002 without ever getting to witness the
42. 2:15launch of his dream.
43. 2:16On December 28 of the same year, his birthday, Reliance launched its mobile service.
44. 2:20Then, the story took a turn.
45. 2:22In 2005, the Reliance family's business was divided between two brothers, and the telecom
46. 2:27business went to the younger brother.
47. 2:29A non-compete agreement was also signed, which meant Mukesh Ambani could not enter the telecom business.
48. 2:34And that is where the most interesting chapter of this story begins.
49. 2:38In May 2010, the two brothers ended their non-compete agreement.
50. 2:41Just a few weeks later, in June 2010, the government conducted an auction for
51. 2:46broadband wireless spectrum.
52. 2:47This was the spectrum that would power the internet of the future.
53. 2:51At the time, the entire telecom industry was chasing 3G licences.
54. 2:54But a company that hardly anyone in the industry had heard of won the auction.
55. 2:59Its name was Infotel Broadband.
56. 3:01And this was no ordinary victory.
57. 3:03Infotel was the only private company to win spectrum across all 22 telecom circles
58. 3:07in the country, placing a bid of approximately ₹12,848 crore.
59. 3:11While the industry was still wondering who Infotel was, an announcement came just a
60. 3:15few hours later that same day.
61. 3:17Reliance Industries was acquiring a 95% stake in Infotel for ₹4,800 crore.
62. 3:21At the time, many people argued that this spectrum was practically useless because India
63. 3:26did not even have a market for mobile data.
64. 3:29Some major companies had actually withdrawn from the auction midway, claiming that the prices
65. 3:33had become unreasonable.
66. 3:34But Mukesh Ambani saw something different.
67. 3:36He later shared an incident that explains his thinking.
68. 3:39His daughter, Isha, who was studying in the United States at the time, came
69. 3:44home to Mumbai during her holidays.
70. 3:46She needed to submit her college assignment online, but the internet at home kept disconnecting.
71. 3:51She complained to her father that despite having so many routers in the house,
72. 3:55the internet still did not work properly.
73. 3:57Now, think about it.
74. 3:59If the internet connection in the home of one of India's wealthiest families was
75. 4:03this unreliable, what must the situation have been like across the rest of the country?
76. 4:08What the industry considered a worthless market was, to Mukesh Ambani, an opportunity that
77. 4:13almost nobody else could see.
78. 4:14In 2010, telecom companies made most of their money from voice calls.
79. 4:18Data was a secondary business.
80. 4:20It was expensive and slow, so people used it cautiously.
81. 4:23Mukesh Ambani made the opposite bet.
82. 4:25He believed that, in the future, even a phone call would simply be a
83. 4:30packet of data.
84. 4:31That is why Jio never built the traditional 2G or 3G networks.
85. 4:35Instead, it went straight to building a 4G-only, all-IP network, where voice calls also
86. 4:39run over data.
87. 4:40This technology is called VoLTE, something you may have seen displayed in your phone's
88. 4:45network bar at some point.
89. 4:46And there is something extremely important to understand here.
90. 4:49The older telecom companies were running three networks simultaneously: 2G, 3G and 4G.
91. 4:54That meant three systems, three sets of operational demands and three different cost structures.
92. 4:58Jio had just one network, built entirely from scratch.
93. 5:01The older companies could not simply make calls free, even if they wanted to,
94. 5:06because voice calls were a major source of their revenue.
95. 5:09If they made calls free, they would destroy their own business model.
96. 5:13Jio had no legacy business to protect.
97. 5:15What generated revenue for other companies was merely a feature for Jio.
98. 5:19This is often how the biggest players lose.
99. 5:22They do not lose because of their competitors.
100. 5:24They lose because of their own outdated business models.
101. 5:27For the next few years, Jio made almost no noise.
102. 5:30But beneath the surface, work was underway.
103. 5:33Approximately 250,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cable were laid across the country, and more than
104. 5:37100,000 towers were erected.
105. 5:39Laying fibre cables everywhere was not easy.
106. 5:41Roads could not simply be dug up at every location.
107. 5:44India did not have the capability to carry out horizontal underground drilling on the
108. 5:49required scale to lay these cables.
109. 5:51So Jio built that capability itself.
110. 5:53Then another problem emerged.
111. 5:54If the network was going to run on VoLTE, customers needed VoLTE-compatible phones.
112. 5:58But such phones barely existed in the market.
113. 6:01So Jio launched its own LYF phones.
114. 6:03Jio created what did not yet exist.
115. 6:05All of this required an investment of approximately ₹1.5 lakh crore, before the company
116. 6:10had earned even a single rupee from its customers.
117. 6:13No ordinary telecom company could have invested that kind of money.
118. 6:16But Reliance had a business that had been generating cash for years: its oil business.
119. 6:21And that cash gave Jio the financial strength to wait.
120. 6:25Then, in December 2015, Jio's soft launch took place.
121. 6:28The date was Dhirubhai Ambani's 83rd birthday.
122. 6:30Thirteen years earlier, Reliance Infocomm had been launched around the same date to fulfil
123. 6:34the father's dream.
124. 6:35Now, the son was presenting the next version of that dream to the world.
125. 6:40Initially, Jio's employees, partners and their families used the network.
126. 6:43They identified problems, those problems were fixed, and word about Jio began spreading even
127. 6:48before the official launch.
128. 6:49Then came September 5, 2016.
129. 6:51Jio officially launched its commercial services with a free welcome offer.
130. 6:54Data was free.
131. 6:55Calls were free.
132. 6:56Jio's apps were free.
133. 6:58And the company made a promise: voice calls would remain free forever.
134. 7:01Now, a question arises.
135. 7:03Why free?
136. 7:03Was Jio really just burning money?
137. 7:05To understand this, you need to understand the telecom business.
138. 7:09Building a network requires thousands of crores of rupees.
139. 7:12But once the network is built, the cost of adding one additional user becomes very low.
140. 7:17So Jio's real enemy was not Airtel or Vodafone.
141. 7:20Its real enemy was a habit.
142. 7:22For years, Indians had been accustomed to rationing their data usage.
143. 7:25Before watching a video, they would wonder whether their megabytes would run out.
144. 7:30Whenever they found Wi-Fi, they would update their phones.
145. 7:32Until this habit changed, even an inexpensive network would not be enough.
146. 7:36That is why Jio systematically removed every reason a customer might have to say no.
147. 7:41Data was expensive, so Jio made it free.
148. 7:44Getting a SIM card was difficult, so activation could now happen within minutes using Aadhaar.
149. 7:49People did not have 4G phones, so Jio introduced LYF phones priced at ₹2,999.
150. 7:53Then came the JioPhone, available for a refundable deposit of approximately ₹1,500.
151. 7:57For the first time, even a daily-wage worker in a small town could access 4G internet.
152. 8:02What was the result?
153. 8:04In its very first month, Jio added approximately 16 million customers.
154. 8:07Jio had set a target of reaching 100 million users within one year.
155. 8:12It crossed that number in just 170 days.
156. 8:14Mukesh Ambani himself revealed that during those 170 days, Jio was adding an average
157. 8:19of approximately seven new customers every second, around the clock.
158. 8:22And this is where the story stops being just the story of a company
159. 8:27and becomes the story of an entire nation.
160. 8:29Before Jio, an average Indian mobile user consumed less than 0.2 GB of data per month.
161. 8:34Today, that figure is approximately 25 GB or more, while Jio customers consume an
162. 8:39average of around 33.6 GB per month.
163. 8:41A student sitting in a small town in Bihar could now access the same
164. 8:46lectures that a student attending a coaching institute in Delhi could access.
165. 8:50A woman who was once afraid to visit a bank started paying the local
166. 8:54vegetable vendor using a QR code.
167. 8:56A farmer who previously had to ask someone else about market prices could now
168. 9:01check them on his own phone.
169. 9:03The number of internet users in rural India was approximately 227 million in 2019.
170. 9:07By the end of 2025, it had grown to around 430 million.
171. 9:11There were approximately 80 million UPI users in 2019, and today that number stands
172. 9:16at more than 550 million.
173. 9:18[VERIFY BOTH STATISTICS] Of course, affordable smartphones, UPI and the government's digital infrastructure also
174. 9:22played important roles.
175. 9:23But for all of these things to work at scale, one essential requirement had
176. 9:28to be met first: affordable internet.
177. 9:30And honestly, even this video reaching so many people would have been much more
178. 9:34difficult without affordable connectivity.
179. 9:35Now, look at the numbers.
180. 9:37Between 2016 and 2019, the price of data fell from ₹225 per GB to
181. 9:42approximately ₹18.50 per GB.
182. 9:43Today, it is approximately ₹7.90 per GB.
183. 9:45And compare these figures with the rest of the world.
184. 9:49Telecom companies in India earn approximately ₹7.90 per GB of data.
185. 9:52In China, the equivalent figure is around ₹17.50, while in the United States, it
186. 9:57is approximately ₹240.
187. 9:58In 2017, just a few months after its launch, Jio users consumed approximately 1
188. 10:02billion GB of data in a single month.
189. 10:05Today, ten years later, more than 23 exabytes of data move across Jio's network every month.
190. 10:10One exabyte is approximately one billion GB.
191. 10:12That means Jio's monthly data traffic is now roughly 23 times what it was in 2017.
192. 10:18And over ten years, Jio has added approximately 500 million net subscribers, more than
193. 10:22the combined subscriber base of America's three largest telecom companies.
194. 10:25But every revolution comes at a cost, and the telecom industry paid that price.
195. 10:30Initially, the older companies resisted.
196. 10:32Complaints were filed with TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
197. 10:35Then, they tried to compete by introducing cheaper plans.
198. 10:38Tata Docomo became part of Airtel.
199. 10:40Telenor sold its Indian business.
200. 10:42And major companies like Aircel collapsed under the weight of their debt.
201. 10:46Vodafone and Idea had to merge to survive.
202. 10:48A market that once had more than ten players shrank to just a handful
203. 10:53of major companies within a few years.
204. 10:55And in that very market, Jio now stands as the largest player.
205. 10:59But there is another layer to this story that most people miss.
206. 11:03Jio was never just a telecom company.
207. 11:05In November 2019, Reliance Jio was brought under Jio Platforms.
208. 11:08This was a digital holding company that housed not just telecom services, but also
209. 11:13apps, platforms and technology businesses.
210. 11:15Then came 2020.
211. 11:16The COVID-19 pandemic had brought the world to a standstill.
212. 11:19Economies were shrinking, and companies were trying to conserve cash.
213. 11:22Yet, that very year, some of the world's biggest technology companies lined up to
214. 11:27invest in Jio Platforms.
215. 11:28Facebook invested approximately ₹43,574 crore, while Google invested approximately ₹33,737 crore.
216. 11:32In just around three months, 13 global investors poured approximately ₹1.52 lakh crore into Jio Platforms.
217. 11:37So here is the question.
218. 11:39When the world was shut down, why were some of the world's biggest technology
219. 11:43companies investing so much money in an Indian telecom company?
220. 11:46Because the next 500 million internet users were not going to come from somewhere else.
221. 11:51They were in India.
222. 11:53And Jio controlled the gateway to reaching those users.
223. 11:55Whether it was Facebook or Google, these companies needed users to grow their businesses,
224. 12:00and reaching those users required a network.
225. 12:02And now, a third generation has entered this story.
226. 12:05In June 2022, Akash Ambani became the chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm.
227. 12:09Under his leadership, Jio did what it had done with 4G, but this time
228. 12:14at an even faster pace.
229. 12:15Jio built standalone 5G.
230. 12:17This means its 5G network does not depend on the older 4G network.
231. 12:21It operates on its own, dedicated architecture.
232. 12:23The rollout was so rapid that by the end of 2023, approximately 85% of
233. 12:28the 5G cells deployed across the country belonged to Jio.
234. 12:31And by March 2026, approximately 191 million people had joined Jio's 5G network.
235. 12:35But perhaps the biggest story of this era is something else.
236. 12:39In 2018, Reliance acquired an American network technology company called Radisys.
237. 12:42This meant Jio no longer wanted to depend entirely on technology from companies like
238. 12:47Ericsson or Nokia.
239. 12:48It wanted to build its own network stack.
240. 12:51And now, Jio is preparing to sell its homegrown 5G technology to other countries.
241. 12:55The company that once purchased technology from the rest of the world and brought
242. 13:00it to India is now talking about selling technology developed in India to the
243. 13:04rest of the world.
244. 13:06This is the exact first-principles technique that Mukesh Ambani had previously used to scale
245. 13:10the oil business as well.
246. 13:12You can click on the video above to understand this through my Shorts video.
247. 13:16And this story is far from over.
248. 13:19Even after all these years, millions of people in India still lack reliable internet
249. 13:23access, especially in mountainous regions, forests and remote villages.
250. 13:26Laying fibre cables and installing towers in these locations is extremely expensive and often
251. 13:31offers the lowest financial returns.
252. 13:32That is why Jio is also considering launching its own satellite network in the near future.
253. 13:38In reality, Jio did not simply sell data.
254. 13:40It gave millions of Indians access, for the very first time, to a world
255. 13:45that had previously been available only to a privileged few.
256. 13:48If you learned something new from this video, please like it.
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