Reliance Jio In 2024: Reliance Enters The AI Revolution

For Reliance, there were two halves to 2024. Pretty much most of the first half of the year was getting the Reliance Jio revenue machine going, followed by a big push for artificial intelligence.

In many ways, this was Reliance looking at what it needs to do now, and what it needs to do for the future. Of course, given that this is Reliance — with Reliance Retail, Reliance Jio Platforms and now Jio Financial Services — there’s always a lot more bubbling under the surface than what dominates headlines.

Nevertheless, as usual, it’s been a year where Reliance continued to press forward towards the transformation from an oil conglomerate to a modern day tech giant. As we review the year gone by for unicorns and listed giants, it would also be pertinent to see where Reliance, Reliance Jio are heading.

For one, we have noted time and again in the past 18 months — Reliance is going from an enabler for startups to a big competitor. It has entered arenas that have huge competitive implications for startups, including a big push for fintech in 2024, and potentially a major salvo for quick commerce as the year drew to a close.

But with the AI push — the partnership with Nvidia and launch of AI products — the tech giant is positioning itself once again as an enabler of the AI revolution. What consequences will this have on the Indian tech ecosystem in 2025 and beyond?

The Reliance Jio Story In 2024

In just over eight years, Reliance Jio has become the largest mobile network provider in the world, outside China. And while this was always on the cards, in 2024, the telco decided to put its revenue machine into gear.

The most obvious step was the tariff hike in the first half of the year, which set Reliance on course to develop a revenue model for the 5G world. The consequence of this hike is plain to see in Reliance’s financials for the two quarters after April 2024.

Not only did the company report record revenues, its profitability also touched an all-time high in Q2 FY25 (as of September 2024). Reliance Jio’s quest for higher ARPU has clearly seen a big stride in Q2, even though Airtel is still comfortably ahead on this metric.

The tariff hike did lead to some churn, with Jio losing 12.74 Mn subscribers, but the record revenue would nevertheless be sweet music to Reliance Jio Platforms chairman Akash Ambani.

In June 2024, Reliance Jio fortified its telecom capabilities by acquiring spectrum worth INR 973.63 Cr in the 1800 MHz band. This included 5.0 MHz in Bihar for INR 420.25 Cr and 9.4 MHz in West Bengal for INR 553.38 Cr. With this, Jio’s spectrum footprint expanded to a colossal 26,801 MHz, further solidifying its leadership in the Indian telecom market.

This obviously puts a lot of onus on Reliance Jio to recover the funds. Already, the company has had to spend on 5G infrastructure which it will look to recover over the next few years through enterprise and consumer adoption, but revenue cannot be ignored in the short term.

Especially, if Reliance Jio’s IPO plans are actually close to reality.

In July 2024, a Jefferies research report said that Reliance Jio Infocomm could be headed for a possible public listing in 2025, either via an IPO or a spin-off, similar to Jio Financial Services. The brokerage estimated that Jio could list at a $112 Bn valuation, easily the largest such listing in India if it does happen, several times larger than the Hyundai Motor India listing which listed at close to $20 Bn.

Reliance Enters AI Era

By the time Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Nvidia chief Jensen Huang took to the stage in October 2024, AI was already a part of Reliance’s roadmap. The company had partnered with IIT-Bombay last year to develop large language models for the Indian market.

But joining hands with Nvidia for the AI infrastructure project in India is a big signal of where Reliance sees itself in the AI world. During his fireside chat with Mukesh Ambani at the inaugural Nvidia AI Summit in India, Huang said, “In order to lead artificial intelligence, you need to have AI model technology, massive quantity data and AI infrastructure. We’re announcing that Reliance and NVIDIA are partnering to build AI infrastructure here in India.”

“Now you have the fundamental ingredients – AI, data and AI infrastructure and you have a large population of users that creates AI flywheel,” he added.

And this brings us to where Reliance’s AI push could eventually lead the Indian tech industry. If indeed, AI is the new internet, could ‘Reliance AI’ become the new Reliance Jio?

While Jio was the pipeline through which Reliance managed to fuel its digital empire and new commerce businesses, AI could unlock a whole lot more — not only in terms of data, but a bigger chunk of the entire technology value chain.

So far Reliance’s push into cloud computing has not led to major success against global cloud majors, but AI could be the catalyst to change this.

Admittedly, like every other tech company, Reliance has had to target consumers too with AI. It launched Jio Phone Call AI for real-time call transcriptions as well as Jio AI Cloud services with 100 GB of storage for consumers; and unveiled Jio Brain (machine-learning-as-a-service), which is its big push towards enterprise AI and agentic models in the future.

In 2025, besides the potential IPO for Reliance Jio, watch out for Reliance unveiling more fleshed-out AI products, and perhaps even launching its own LLM to take on OpenAI, Google, Meta and Anthropic.

Sridhar Tonse Pai, founder and CEO of Tonse Telecom, believes that with its AI and 5G initiatives, Reliance Jio is going from a disruptor and challenger to a powerful defender of its territory. “With access to capital and a vision to dominate, it gets its way through and manages partnerships with other global leaders with ease. This has been repeatedly proven to be true,” Pai added.

Elaborating on the Reliance Jio advantage in digital infrastructure, Pai said that this year, Jio also added satellite internet services, besides owning submarine and subterranean infrastructure as well as surface infra and the spectrum. On the fixed and hybrid lines, it also owns fibre optic broadband. “Reliance Jio will now have infra at all layers and the content that everyone consumes. Making this first-level capability and offerings complete,” added Pai.

Fintech And OTT: The Next Frontiers

Within those layers, financial services is a big play for Reliance. Reliance’s AI plans have deep implications for Jio Financial Services, which saw an official launch in 2024.

And like Pai pointed out there’s also the matter of the new entertainment giant that emerged from the merger of Reliance Industries, Viacom18 and the Walt Disney Company (Disney+ Hotstar).

These represent the twin engines that Reliance is using to create a wall garden of services of products.

Throughout the past year, we have noted that JFS is a threat to fintech startups. Jio Financial Services is coming for every fintech startup — from banking to payments to digital lending to insurance to investment and even an AMC. And by virtue of being the most capitalised fintech company in India (roughly $25 Bn), it’s coming into the arena with a huge advantage.

It signed a JV deal with Blackrock for an AMC, wealth management and private credit businesses. On the payments side, for merchants, JFS launched sound boxes and made a big acquisition push for UPI through the Jio Finance app.

Here, Jio Finance will have to fight off Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, Flipkart, BharatPe, CRED, Pine Labs and others that have scaled up their PoS and UPI payments businesses.

In an analyst call in April 2024, JFS managing director and CEO Hitesh Kumar Sethia said India’s newest fintech giant has three major advantages: “Number 1, the Jio brand; number 2, capital; and number 3, customer adjacency from our ecosystem,” he said.

Finally, Reliance ended the year with the completion of the $8.5 Bn merger of Jio Cinema, Viacom18, and Disney+ Hotstar.

This deal created India’s largest entertainment entity, boasting 120 TV channels and two of the largest streaming services in the country. The merged entity promises to redefine the content landscape in India, and already there’s a lot of pressure on global competition such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

More details about the combined platform will be revealed in 2025, and is likely to come in the first half of the year, before the next season of the Indian Premier League, which is typically a peak viewership event for JioCinema.

Reliance Jio In 2025: What’s In Store?

Analysts believe this merger could position Jio as a formidable player not just in telecom but in the global entertainment market. These investments mean that the Reliance empire has had to make some sacrifices and cost-cutting.

For the first time, Reliance Jio reduced its workforce by over 5,000 employees in FY24, bringing the headcount to approximately 90,067. Though the company did not specify reasons, industry experts speculated this move was part of broader cost-optimisation efforts.

Amitabh Srivastava, cofounder and MD of Voyage Ahead Solutions estimates that besides raising debt and solidifying its IPO plans, Jio will likely prioritise plans to retain consumers, network expansion and upgrades, and expansion into underserved areas in 2025. Most importantly, it will focus on data monetisation beyond just subscriber numbers, which is where the AI plans come into play.

Seconding this, Tonse Telecom’s Pai added that Jio would now be equipped to offer next level gaming with generative AI capabilities, AI-as-a-service and other AI centric solutions for consumers and enterprises.

The company is also expected to launch affordable devices for the AI age and might also enter the Extended Reality and gaming hardware space. And, on the infra side, expanding AI data centre capabilities will be a key focus. Reliance’s ability to navigate the AI world, and capitalise on its existing strengths like Jio 5G, the Disney merger will form a large part of the narrative in 2025.