What took India by storm is making new records everyday. Reliance Jio acquired 16 million customers in one month making a new world record, and the company is headed to its target of 100 million customers by the end of this year, or at least by March 2017.
According to a presentation given to Reliance Industries’ investors, the company has booked more than 24 million customers till now, and the leading circles are Telangana and Gujarat at 1.2 million and 1.5 million subscribers by September 30.
Trailing by only 0.1m, Tamil Nadu stands at 1.1 million users while Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Rajasthan telecom circles account for around a million subscribers each. Madhya Pradesh, UP East and UP west follow these with 0.9 million users.
A report by ET said, “Delhi and Haryana had 0.7 million users each, while Mumbai, Orissa, Kolkata and Kerala had 0.6 million users. Punjab had 0.8 million users. West Bengal had 0.5 million users, followed by Assam with 0.3 million, Himachal Pradesh with 0.2 million, the north eastern circle with 0.1 million, and Jammu & Kashmir with 0.1 million, the data showed.”
Will Reliance Jio Achieve 100 Mln Subscriber Target by Dec 31?
The Reliance Jio preview offer is active only till the end of this year, where users can enjoy unlimited HD voice calls, video calls and text messages, along with high-speed 4G internet for free.
Reliance Jio has spread to more than 16,000 cities and over 2 lakh villages and Reliance wants to extend this further to more than 20,000 cities and 3 lakh villages. The company is planning to invest heavily into its infrastructure as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular up their game.
In around 50 days, Jio has been able to acquire only around 25 million customers at the max, which translates to 5 lakh customers every day. This is still very far behind the target of 10 lakh customers a day for more than 3 months.
As the offline stores face shortage of sim cards and the company sees huge demand for Jio services, the customer acquisition takes a hit. At the current rate, Jio will only be able to reach the 60 million mark, which although isn’t a bad feat, but very short of Reliance Jio’s target.
Rumours have it that the free preview offer would be extended upto March 31st 2017, so that Jio can cross 100 million subscriber mark by then. Also, the interconnection issues that have plagued Jio voice calls will be sorted out, so users can fully experience Jio services as they should.
It can also be seen that Gujarat and Telangana have outnumbered the customers to Delhi and Mumbai, the largest cities in India. This shows that Jio effect is stronger in circles where Airtel and Vodafone do not have a stronger hold and this is what Reliance is taking advantage of.