Reliance Jio edging past incumbents with partnerships on exclusive content

Airtel, too, is beefing up its content offering and announced a partnership with Hotstar and Amazon to bundle the latter's Prime membership with its post-paid plans

The battle for subscribers market share between incumbent telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone, and Reliance Jio is increasingly shifting towards content driven offerings. Incumbent operators, who are struggling to stand their ground given pricing pressures and regulatory headwinds, are now faced with a content-driven marketplace where the scales are tilting towards Reliance Jio.

Analysts led by Srinivas Rao of Deutsche Bank believe that content is the new competitive lever for telecom companies. “Content bundling, besides price was one of the key differentiators during the launch of Jio’s 4G feature phone or Jiophone. Unlike Airtel, Jio has ownership of