Jio surges forward with subs and profits

Reliance Jio has unveiled its latest quarterly figures and, surprise surprise, subs are once again on the up as well as profits.

Monthly ARPU might have be on the decline, down to $1.77, a trend which is not showing signs of slowing, but scale seems to be the answer for Jio. The firm now has a subscriber base of 331 million, adding 24.5 million over the last three months and 116 million during the last year.

“Growth in Jio mobility services has continued to surpass all expectations,” said Mukesh Ambani, MD of Reliance Industries, Jio’s parent company.

“In less than two years of commercial operations, Jio network carried almost 11 Exabytes of data traffic during the recently concluded fiscal quarter. Jio management is focused on giving unmatched digital experience at most affordable price to every citizen of the country, and accordingly expanding the network capacity and coverage to keep pace with demand.”

The progress which has been made by the firm over the course of the last two years is remarkable and perhaps demonstrates how under-developed the Indian market actually was. Although India has been seen as a growth economy, part of the now old-fashioned BRICs group, it wasn’t until Jio shook up the market the digital revolution took hold.

Average consumption of data is now up to 11.4 GB a month, with Jio suggesting customers used 10 exabytes over its network during the quarter. The Indian consumer certainly has an appetite for data and they don’t seem to be satisfied whatsoever.

Looking at the financials, these are also very promising. Early criticism of Jio was that it was negatively impacting competition in the market as there was little profit being made by the firm. This is generally seen as a negative, as running loss leaders to kill off competition very rarely works for the greater good in the long-term, though the numbers speak for themselves.

Quarterly revenues increased 44% year-on-year, while the firm collected profits of $119 million, a 45% year-on-year boost. These numbers are attractive for the moment, but profitability currently looks to be reliant on scale and subscriber growth. Sooner or later, this growth will slow, and the team will have to look at the worrying rate at which ARPU is declining.