Developing 5G tech; Google to invest Rs 33,737 cr for stake in Jio: Ambani

Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday announced his group's digital arm Jio developing a homegrown 5G telecom solution. Ambani also welcomed Google as a strategic investor in Jio Platforms. " We have signed a binding partnership and an investment agreement under which Google will invest Rs 33,737 crores for a 7.7 per cent stake in Jio Platforms," he said.

"Jio has designed and developed a complete 5G solution from scratch. It will be ready for trials as soon as 5G spectrum is available and can be ready for field deployment next year," Ambani said at Reliance Industries' annual general meeting.

Jio's global-scale 4G and fibre network is powered by several core software technologies and components. "It is this capability and know-how that positions Jio on the cutting edge of another exciting frontier 5G," he said.

Jio Platforms, with over 20 startup partners, has built world-class capabilities in technologies such as 4G, 5G, Cloud computing, Devices and OS, Big Data, AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Natural Language Understanding and Computer Vision, he said.

"Using these technologies, we can create compelling solutions across multiple industry verticals like media, financial services, new commerce, education, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities, smart manufacturing & smart mobility," he said, adding Jio Platforms is conceived with vision of developing original, captive intellectual property, using which we can demonstrate transformative power of technology across multiple ecosystems first in India, and then rest of world.

In the next three years, Jio will connect half a billion mobile customers, a billion smart sensors and 50 million home and business establishments, Ambani said.

"We have fully kickstarted five accelerators of growth of digital connectivity: Mobile broadband, JioFiber, Jio's enterprise broadband, broadband for SMEs, and Jio's Narrowband Internet-of-Things (NBIoT)," he noted.

With Google's invetment the cumulative fund raising by Reliance in less than three months is Rs 2,12,809 crore, he added.

This includes investments by Facebook and other investors in Jio Platforms and Rs 53,124 crore Rights Issue, and investment by BP in fuel retailing venture.

"It is in excess of our net debt of Rs 1,61,035 crore at the end of FY19-20," he said. "Reliance is now truly a zero net debt company, well ahead of my goal of March 2021. It has an extremely strong Balance Sheet that will support growth plans for its three Hyper-Growth Engines Jio, Retail and O2C."

He also said India's first cloud-based video conferencing app JioMeet has seen 5 million downloads within days of its launch.

Reliance Industries earlier this week launched JioMeet video conferencing app with unlimited free calling, which is being seen as rate war on rival Zoom.

JioMeet video conferencing app is available across Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and web.