Reliance Jio ties up with Polygon Labs to bring Web3 to 450 million users

Blockchain collaboration aims to expand Web3 applications beyond cryptocurrency for Jio's vast customer base

Reliance Industries’ (RIL) digital arm Jio Platforms, which operates the country’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio, has partnered with blockchain company Polygon Labs to offer Web3 capabilities to its existing applications and services.

 

The partnership would enable the company to leverage Polygon’s blockchain solutions for its user base of over 450 million customers.

 

“Reliance leverages the infrastructure that Polygon has in order for them to go out and enable their users to use the stack. They can go out and build an application running on Polygon as a backend allowing users to leverage the technology,” said Aishwary Gupta, global head of Payments, Polygon Labs.

 

Gupta did not divulge the details about the Web3 products that the companies are partnering for due to confidentiality.

 

However, he explained that there is potential for the blockchain technology to be utilised beyond cryptocurrency and trading associated with virtual digital assets (VDAs) in the country.

 

“AI and crypto can collide with each other to create agentic frameworks, one can create communities on top of blockchains, and payments is another area where the technology can be used since financial infrastructure is not ready to take care of the Web3 side of things,” he said while explaining emerging use cases of the technology in the country.

 

Other use cases include creating a marketplace for vouchers where users can buy or sell these in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company has worked with brands like Flipkart to collaborate for a similar offering, he said.

 

“We have done everything which was Web3 while working with 60 brands. Users do not know that they're interacting with Polygon since it is in the backend,” he said.

 

Founded in 2017 as Matic Network, the company was rebranded to Polygon in 2021. It raised about $450 million through a private sale of its native MATIC token in a funding round in 2022, according to a blog on its website.

 

Web3 refers to the next generation of the internet that extends use cases on a blockchain-based web including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, decentralised finance, among others. The technology lends more control to a user based on its decentralised nature.