Mukesh D. Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Limited
India is witnessing a major digital revolution with the telecom industry, particularly the operator community, leading from the front. Data services and enabling next-generation technologies such as 4G and 5G are fundamental to achieving the government’s Digital India vision. On a number of occasions, Mukesh D. Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Limited – the parent company of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited – has highlighted the role that data will play in India’s transformation to a digital economy. He believes that offering data services at affordable rates is crucial to realising the country’s digital aspirations. To this end, Jio is expanding its network to ensure that the benefits of the latest technologies touch all lives in India. The following is a summary of his speeches made at various industry events during 2018…
India’s digital transformation
Today’s India is surging ahead on the back of technology. If there is one place in the world where the transformative power of digitalisation is breaking new ground every day, it is India. The country’s digital transformation is unmatched and unprecedented. In just 24 months, India has taken a leadership position, from being 155th in wireless broadband technology adoption. And the impact of this unprecedented growth can be seen across all digital domains. Over the next two decades, India will be leading the world and contributing to the next wave of global economic growth.
The world has in the past witnessed three industrial revolutions. The first was powered by coal and steam. The second was fuelled by electricity and oil. And the third was driven by electronics and information technology. During the first two revolutions, India languished on the fringes. It only started playing catch-up in the computer-driven third industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution is now upon us. It will be marked by a fusion of technologies, straddling the physical, digital and biological worlds. Data is the foundation of this revolution, which will be driven by data and be defined by humanism.
India is already generating a significant quantum of data. The country has a chance to not just participate in the fourth industrial revolution but to also lead it, due to three reasons. First, the India of today is a very young nation – 63 per cent of our 1.3 billion population is aged below 35. The country’s vast tech-savvy young population is its key strength. Second, India is a democracy and is run on the model of equitable and inclusive growth. With world-class digital infrastructure in place, each one of the 1.3 billion people of India can now productively participate in the fourth industrial revolution. Third, India offers a rich and fertile ground for entrepreneurship. It has already succeeded in creating a healthy ecosystem to nurture entrepreneurs and has emerged as the fastest growing start-up base worldwide. Today, the nation is home to the third largest number of technology-driven start-ups in the world.
“Jio is our youngest and fastest growing venture that has been conceived as a digital movement to transform India.”
It is, thus, important that we prepare ourselves for a period of information and digital abundance. All Indians will have access to massive computing on the cloud and to all information on the planet. Jio is determined to connect everyone and everything, everywhere – always with the highest quality and at the most affordable price.
Spotlight on Jio
For Reliance, Jio is not just another business. It is our youngest and fastest growing venture that has been conceived
as a digital movement to transform India. Jio is a 3 exabyte per month mobile network now. It is on a mission to make digital life a reality for the 1.3 billion Indians. By 2020, I believe that India will be a fully 4G country, ready for 5G ahead of others.
With JioGigaFiber, we have now begun an ambitious push in fixed broadband through fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-premises. Our aim is to ensure that India rises from the present 135th rank to be among the top three nations in fixed broadband in the next three years. We will extend this fibre connectivity to homes, merchants, small and medium enterprises, and large enterprises simultaneously across 1,500 cities to offer the most advanced fibre-based broadband connectivity solutions. For the 30 million small merchants and businesses, this will provide the agility and customer obsession of a small owner-driven business and simultaneously provide them the tools and capability to compete on level terms with larger businesses.
Silent revolution in rural India
I am excited about the promise and prospect of bringing the digital revolution to India’s villages – to agriculture, to rural enterprises and to marginalised communities everywhere. The digital connectivity revolution can transform rural India most comprehensively. During the past few months, over 50 million villagers have got affordable smartphones. For most of them, it is not only their first phone but also their first radio/music player, first TV, first camera and first internet. It is important to acknowledge the contribution of the government’s BharatNet programme in providing high quality connectivity in some of the remotest areas of our country. This transformation will accelerate as we get ready for a 5G world driven by the government’s proactive approach.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution will be marked by a fusion of technologies, straddling the physical, digital and biological worlds. Data is the foundation of this revolution, which will be driven by data and be defined by humanism.”
Innovation and disruption
Mobile computing as a catalyst is driving massive data consumption and this has given young Indians a fertile ground for disruptive ideas. The youth of India are not happy being incrementally innovative; they want to be truly disruptive. Cloud computing and networking technologies have used broadband as a foundational enabler, leading Indian entrepreneurs to start making a global impact. All the new technologies are accelerating in speed, rate and power, and we need to adapt to the scorching pace of innovation and learn to collaborate on scale.
Data colonisation
Data is emerging as the most important resource in this new world. India and Indians will generate humongous amounts of data, and thus it is important that this rich resource is utilised, with adequate safeguards. The country’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people and not by corporates, especially global corporations. The Supreme Court of India has mandated that data privacy is sacrosanct. Therefore, for India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, the necessary steps would need to be taken for migrating the control and ownership of Indian data back to India.
The way forward
Everything in the world is going digital – music, movies, commerce, banking, cars, homes, health care, education. Every aspect of life is going digital. Digital technologies will completely transform every sector of the economy and every field of life. This will be achieved by using the most powerful tools of connectivity and digital technologies. New-generation digital technologies, with artificial intelligence at their core, are transforming our world like never before.
Today, we have the opportunity to digitally reinvent all sectors of our economy – be it financial services, commerce, manufacturing, agriculture, art and craft, education or health care. India must embrace this digital, fourth industrial revolution with a new mindset to create a bright and prosperous future.
