Mukesh Ambani to address 'all' on live video today

Speculations over announcement on Jio, DTH foray

Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries (RIL), will address the company’s stakeholders on Thursday through a live broadcast over the firm’s social media channels.

This will be his first such appearance outside the company’s annual general meeting. It will be broadcast live at 1:30 pm. The announcement of the broadcast on Wednesday sparked speculations about a major announcement.

There are expectations of an announcement for Reliance Jio customers, whose free service end on December 31. Jio got 50 million subscribers in 85 days since its September 5 launch. Another speculation is an announcement of the company’s foray into direct-to-home business. The dominant players in the sector are Tata Sky, Dish TV and Bharti.

On September 1, the company had announced free voice calls — both local and roaming — and data at low rates of ~25-50 per gigabyte (GB) till the end of the year. Voice calls, meanwhile, would never be charged on the Jio service, the company said. The cut-off date for joining the scheme is December 3.

Since 2014, when social media was first used by the company, it has been adding more platforms to address its stakeholders.

“MDA”, as Mukesh Ambani is known in the company, speaks through these platform “to all” only during extraordinary general meetings, though quarterly result announcements are routinely made by the group chief financial officer and sometimes other senior executives as a matter of routine.

Flame of Truth and Jio Digital Life are the two RIL channels on YouTube. Besides it has FlameOfTruth, RelianceJio and RIL_foundation handles on Twitter.