MUMBAI: After establishing a strong presence in the Indian market, digital services major Jio is now preparing to take its Made-in-India technology offerings to global markets, with a focus on connectivity, digital products, enterprise solutions and artificial intelligence, Jio Platforms Managing Director and Reliance Jio Chairman Akash Ambani said.
In a letter to employees marking a decade of Jio, Ambani said the company had played a key role in building the foundation of Digital India, accelerating the country’s transition to 5G and expanding connectivity to homes and businesses while developing technology aimed at making digital services accessible to people at scale.
“Jio today is much more than a telecom company,” Ambani said, highlighting the company’s focus on developing original technologies in India. He said the next phase would involve taking these technologies to international markets and strengthening India’s position as a global creator of technology.
Jio commercially launched its mobile services on September 5, 2016, through Reliance Jio Infocomm, introducing free voice calling as a major disruption in the Indian telecom sector. The network had initially been trialled among Reliance Industries employees from December 28, 2015, before being extended to their friends and associates.
Even after its commercial launch, Jio offered services free of charge to subscribers for six months under a promotional scheme. The company crossed the 50-million subscriber mark within 83 days and reached 100 million subscribers in less than six months.
Reflecting on the journey, Ambani credited the company’s employees for building Jio through what he described as a culture of innovation, speed and customer-centricity. He said teams across the organisation had consistently taken on difficult challenges, questioned established practices and developed new products and technologies.
As part of a corporate restructuring, Reliance Jio became a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, which was incorporated in November 2019. The company had 533.3 million customers as of June 30, 2026, underlining the scale it has achieved over the past decade.
Jio has also emerged as one of the world’s largest data operators, carrying more than 23 exabytes of data traffic every month, according to Ambani. Its connectivity subscriber base has recorded net additions of nearly 500 million over the past decade, making it the fastest-growing connectivity subscriber base outside China, he said.
Ambani further noted that Jio’s net subscriber additions over the decade were higher than the combined additions of the three largest US telecom operators and more than 1.3 times those of its nearest Indian competitor.
With its next phase centred on artificial intelligence, enterprise technology, digital products and connectivity, Jio is seeking to evolve from a domestic telecom disruptor into a technology company with a global footprint.
