TIL Desk/Business/Mumbai/ Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s telecom venture Jio, which catapulted India as the world’s largest mobile broadband data consuming nation in less than two years, was first seeded by his daughter, Isha, in 2011.
This was revealed by Ambani, the richest Indian, in his acceptance speech on Thursday night after his oil-to-telecom conglomerate, Reliance Industries was presented with the ‘Drivers of Change’ award at the Financial Times Arcelor Mittal Boldness in Business Awards.
Since the idea first cropped up, Reliance, which owns and operates the world’s largest single location refinery complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat, has spent more than $31 billion to break into India’s mobile-phone market.
The 2016 upstart, called Jio, dislodged rivals and has emerged as the nation’s No. 4 carrier by offering call services free for life and data transmission at dirt cheap rates.
Jio is also gearing up for newer data-heavy services that can connect homes, businesses, and cars to the internet. Ambani said with super-abundant youthful talent, India is poised to become the third largest economy in the world by 2028 — within just a single decade.
“The idea of Jio was first seeded by my daughter, Isha, in 2011. She was a student at Yale (in the US) and was home for holidays. She wanted to submit some coursework – and she said, ‘Dad, the internet in our house sucks’,” he recalled.
