Reliance AGM 2021: Jio’s User Base Up 37.9 Mn At Over 425 Mn In FY21

Reliance Jio’s user base has grown 37.9 Mn to over 425 Mn, Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani informed shareholders in its annual general meeting at Jamnagar on Thursday (June 24). The company’s revenue for FY21 stood at INR 1,53,818 Cr, up 5.6% YoY, while EBITDA rose 1.5% to INR 9,842 Cr.  The oil to telco conglomerate is the revenue leader in 18 of 22 telecom circles in the country, Ambani told shareholders. 

Reliance Jio’s parent company Jio Platforms had posted a net profit of INR 3,508 Cr for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, as compared to INR 2,379 Cr in the same quarter of the previous fiscal. Jio Platform’s consolidated revenue in FY21 stood at INR 86,493 Cr while it registered an EBITDA of INR 32,359 Cr. announced Mukesh Ambani.

RIL shares were trading at INR 2179.70 at 2:51 IST, down 1.16% from the day’s opening.

In its annual report for FY21 recently, the company said it completed fundraising of INR 1.52 Lakh Cr across 13 global marquee investors, including Facebook and Google, in FY21, giving a boost to the Centre’s ‘Make in India’ plan.

The company’s average revenue per user (ARPU) stood at INR 138.2 as of March 2021. The average data consumption for FY21 stood at 13.3 GB per user, while total data consumption for the year rose to 16.7 Bn gigabytes.

Jio is also accelerating the rollout of digital platforms and indigenously developed next-generation 5G stack, making it affordable and available everywhere, the report said.

Jio and Qualcomm, along with Jio Platform Limited’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Radisys Corporation, have developed an open and interoperable interface-compliant architecture-based 5G solution with a virtualised RAN (vRAN), which will accelerate the development and rollout of indigenous 5G network in India.

“The 5G RAN Platform has crossed the 1 Gbps milestone on the Jio 5G core network and 5G smartphones,” the company said in its annual report.

Meanwhile, Reliance Jio has commenced 5G trials in Mumbai as it races with rival Bharti Airtel to introduce the mobile technology in India.

While Jio’s trials in Mumbai are being carried out using indigenously developed technology, the company has tied up with multinational vendors, including Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung for trials in Delhi, Pune, and Gujarat.

The Department of Telecommunications had in May allocated 5G trial spectrum in 700-megahertz (MHz), 3.2-3.6-gigahertz (GHz), and 24.25-28.5-GHz bands to Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea to develop India-specific use-cases. Jio is using standalone 5G architecture for its trials and this will include testing of core and radio network for peak speed, latency, and data loads, said a source.

Tests in other cities will commence soon and will need to be completed in six months, according to the spectrum licence conditions