Jio races ahead of Airtel to become India's 2nd largest telecom company

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio is now reportedly the second-largest telecom company in the country. The company is said to have overtaken Bharti Airtel in terms of customer base and now trails only Vodafone Idea.

While Jio presently has 306 million customers, Vodafone Idea continues to lead the industry with 387 million subscribers, according to a Times of India report. Airtel has 284 million subscribers.

Jio, since its launch in Spetember 2016, has seen a meteoric growth on the back of aggressive and dirt-cheap consumer tariff plans. On the other hand, Airtel, which dominated the Indian telecom space for almost two decades, is witnessing a dramatic fall. It was first overtaken by Vodafone Idea in the middle last year and now finds itself at the third spot.

In February, Jio had added 7.79 million subscribers, while Vodafone Idea lost 5.78 million customers,  according to data published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Airtel lost 49,896 customers.

Over the past year, Jio's active subscriber market share has gone up to 24 per cent, gaining 9 percentage points (ppts), while Bharti has maintained its share at 32 per cent and Vodafone Idea lost 5 percentage point to fall to 37 per cent, according to a report released by brokerage firm CLSA this month.