Customers saved over Rs 65,000cr on data plans thanks to Jio's entry: Study

Indian mobile data users have together saved around Rs 65,000 crore a year since Reliance Jio entered the domestic telecom space in 2016, a study by the Institute for Competitiveness (IFC), an India-based research and knowledge outfit linked to Harvard Business School, shows.

The primary reason for this drastic drop was a fall in data prices across the board, something that Jio spearheaded ever since it set foot in the telecom market. Data compiled by IFC showed that the average price of data has fallen from Rs 152/GB before Jio’s entry to Rs 10/GB now.

Assuming India has around 350 million mobile data users, this translates to financial savings of over USD 10 billion, which is approximately Rs 65,000 crore. And this is despite the research institute taking a conservative estimate that each user uses only 1 GB of data a month.

To put things in perspective, what Indian users end up saving on an annual basis after Jio’s big entry is more than the nominal GDP of over 50 countries in the world. So it goes without saying that Reliance Jio had a direct and pivotal role to play in bringing down data prices in India, IFC said in the report.

Another benefit of its entry into the Indian telecom market has been the increased access to data that users around the country are now enjoying. An estimate by IFC showed that a 10 percent increase in internet penetration could lead to GDP per capita increasing by as much as 3.9 percent.

When the institute, however, tracked India’s progress over the years in terms of internet penetration, it found that till July 2016, India had managed to increase internet penetration in the country by a large extent but could not increase internet usage commensurately.

“In a price sensitive market like India, the high cost of data plans and smartphones must have discouraged consumers from using the internet to its fullest potential. Therefore, Jio’s contribution in making both these aspects affordable will have an indelible impact in the market,” IFC said in its report.

With its own 4G feature phone – the JioPhone – and its dirt-cheap plans for customers, Jio has taken a giant leap towards furthering data and internet inclusion in the country. From buying plans that offered less than a GB of data a month only a couple of years ago, Indians have now progressed to plans that offer more than twice that in a day, thanks to Jio and what it got other telecom players to do.