indo-asian news service, Mumbai, June 12: Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani Friday listed the specifics of some big-ticket investments worth Rs 200,000cr ($33 billion), spanning refining to retail and said 4G services will roll-out from December under “Jio” brand with devices from Rs 4,000.
“We are nearing the realisation of our largest investment programme in our history of Rs 100,000cr,” Ambani told the company’s 41st annual general meeting here, adding half of that will be in refining and petrochem business and the other half under the digital India platform.
He said these initiatives, in refining, petrochem, oil and gas exploration, broadband and retail will fructify over the next 12-18 months. But the bulk of his address was devoted to Reliance Jio – the group’s latest initiative on digital India.
Reliance Jio from December
“In our digital business, our plan is to provide the same power of computing, communication and information to every individual, whether in towns or rural areas, which the US president had 10-15 years ago,” he said. “All this at about Rs300 to Rs500 per month.”
The chairman said the Reliance team was currently on pre-launch testing and stabilisation phase of this large and complex network and that soft-launch had been planed over the next few months with around million customers.
“This beta programme will be upgraded into commercial operations around December of this year,” he said, adding that the company now has end-to-end initial capacity to serve over 100 million broadband and 20 million fibre-to-home customers for the Jio platform.
Affordable devices
On devices, the chairman said the focus has been on affordable, yet innovative smartphones.
“The combination of Jio’s strong initiatives and a supportive global environment, gives me the confidence that we will see VoLTE (Voice-over-long-term evolution) 4G smartphones in India at prices below `4,000 by December of this year,” Ambani said.
Host of apps
The company will also offer a host of other apps and services like Jio Chat app that has garnered over one million active users in three months. Other offerings include switch-and-walk app, Jio Drive (cloud app), Jio play, Jio beats, Jio mags, Jio news and Jio money.
While the switch-and-walk app will allow customers to seamlessly copy everything from their old phone to a new phone, the Jio drive will enable cloud capabilities. Jio beats, Jio mags and Jio news, as their names suggest, would be digital services offering for content dissemination.
Early revision of gas prices
Earlier in his address, Ambani sought an early revision of gas prices and urged the government to quickly resolve what he termed as “legacy issues” over its production-sharing contracts for discovered hydrocarbon.
Reliance, he said, was a pioneer in deep-water production of oil and gas and that the company was trying hard to raise output from the challenging areas in the Krishna-Godavari basin. But returns were below the cost of capital.
