‘Digital Dreamer’ Mukesh Ambani Wants To Beat Netflix, Google, Facebook, Spotify

It seems that Reliance' competitors are not Airtel, Vodafone, Idea

By Mohul Ghosh On Jan 25, 2019

Mukesh Ambani wants to beat Netflix, Google

Decoding the objectives of business czar Mukesh Ambani, Foreign Policy magazine has claimed that Reliance wants to beat digital behemoths such as Google, Netflix, Facebook, and Spotify.

As per the magazine, Mukesh Ambani now wants to become World’s richest person, and his massive, unprecedented digital ambitions will help him to do so.

Mukesh Ambani’s Big Digital Gamble

The magazine observes that Reliance spent billions of dollars to establish state of the art telecom infrastructure in the country, and then offered free data for three months.

This triggered a revolution in the telecom sector in India, ‘millions of people rushed to sign up.’.

The magazine said that in order to conquer the lucrative, but capital-centric telecom sector, Mukesh Ambani erected more than 200,000 cell-phone towers across India, laid 150,000 miles of fiber-optic cables across the length and breadth of the nation.

And this worked.

“Two large wireless operators have either shut down or filed for bankruptcy, while other competitors have been forced into uneasy mergers.”

More than a quarter billion Indians are right now using Jio, and when the freebies ended, more than 100 million paying customers were already using Jio’s services.

“Life is going digital,” said Mukesh Ambani to investors.

But, it seems that the real objective of Mukesh Ambani was not to conquer the telecom sector, but the digital lives of Indians.

Mukesh Ambani Wants To Beat Netflix, Google, Facebook, Spotify?

As per the magazine’s observations, the real purpose behind Mukesh Ambani’s massive spending into the telecom sector was to capture the digital lives of Indians and monetize their content consumption.

The magazine has observed that Jio’s competitors’ aren’t telecom players like Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and BSNL, but digital behemoths such as Netflix, Facebook, Google and others, who have amassed millions of subscribers, and are making billions of dollars by connecting them with the right content, they want to consume.

As per the magazine, Jio right now offers these services: TV Streaming services, online payment system, a music platform, a health care app, a connected home system, a messaging platform, and in the coming days, the list will only expand.

Hence, Reliance’ strategy is simple: First, accumulate users, and provide them high-speed Internet at a cheap cost. Once they start consuming content, then offer them unbeatable offers which they cannot resist.

And in order to do this, Jio will have to become a combination of Netflix, Facebook, Google, Spotify: An all-in-one platform for all types of digital content and social media usage.

This is certainly good news for content creators in India, as they will now get more opportunity to unleash their creativity, backed by corporate behemoths who wants to invest.

The Challenge

However, the only challenge as of now, infront of Mukesh Ambani is spending power of Indians. Offering basic smartphone for less than $23 works in a country where an average citizen has $2000 annual income.

But when it comes to monthly subscriptions for content, then it can pose an issue.

Foreign Magazine says, “His real bet is that average income in India—currently less than $2,000 a year—will rise enough for large numbers of Indians to start paying for the content they consume online.”

However, once Indians start paying for content, the magazine argues, Mukesh Ambani will become world’s richest person.

You can read the article here.