How Google is aiming high gains with big investment in Reliance Jio

New Delhi : We all know that Google has bought 7.77% of Reliance Jio stakes and made a heavy investment to transform the mobile technology in India with an aim of moving nearly 350 million 2G subscribers to its 4G network fold. For this, Google has made a whopping investment of Rs 33,737 crore into the Jio Platforms.

While it appears to be a major one for Reliance Jio, Google is also likely to generate big benefits from it.

Since Google would be developing the software for these affordable smartphones, it stands to gain revenue-wise, as 2G users moving to 4G will buy several apps and updates from its Playstore over a period of time. The payment for buying apps and their updates are directly made by the consumers to companies like Google. This broadening of the revenue base will be a big gain for Google, analysts told Financial Express.

Way back in 2018, Jio had launched the low-end JioPhone aimed at low-paying subscribers who could not afford smartphones. Though JioPhone is a 4G phone, it does not have features like downloading apps, etc, so apps like Facebook or WhatsApp need to be built into them at the manufacturing stage itself. The consumers using these phones barely use such apps, which is why Arpu and data usage do not see a surge. There are around 100 million JioPhone users.

Though Jio has a higher subscriber base than Bharti Airtel, if one looks at the January-March numbers, its Arpu at Rs 131 was much lower than Bharti’s Rs 154. Even the data usage per customer of Bharti was higher at 14 GB a month compared to Jio’s 11 GB. With the Google smartphone, this trend can be reversed.