INF70005 Strategic Project Management: JIO Network Case Study

This report provides a critical evaluation of Reliance JIO's successful launch in India, analyzing its strategic project time and alignment with the Indian government's "Digital India" initiative. The analysis focuses on JIO's innovative business strategy, which involved offering competitive 4G services and leveraging the USP business model to gain a significant market share. It discusses how JIO's entry disrupted the existing telecommunication industry, challenged established market players like Vodafone and Airtel, and democratized digital access for a large portion of the Indian population. The report also considers the criticisms and allegations of unfair business practices against JIO, while acknowledging its overall positive impact on India's GDP growth and digital infrastructure. Drawing on the criteria provided by Thomsett (2002), the report assesses the project's success despite potential flaws in execution, similar to the Sydney Opera House example, where the final impact overshadowed initial setbacks. Finally, the report highlights JIO's counter strategies to maintain its growth, such as launching a feature phone with preinstalled JIO applications to compete with Airtel's joint ventures.

Running head: STRATEGIC PROJECT TIME
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Student’s Name
University Name
Author’ Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
1.1 Company Background......................................................................................................3
1.2 Selection of the case study...............................................................................................4
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................5
2.1 Standard Criteria...............................................................................................................5
2.2 Identification and Justification of the Chosen criteria......................................................6
3. Critical analysis of the Case based on chosen criteria...........................................................7
4. Recommendations..................................................................................................................9
5. Conclusions............................................................................................................................9

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1. Introduction
This project deals with the business case of the successful launch of the JIO network
in India. This project discusses how the project synced itself and utilised the Indian
government’s “Digital India “initiative.
1.1 Company Background
Reliance JIO Limited is an operator of mobile network in India. The owner of JIO
network in India is Reliance Industries which have their headquarters in Navi Mumbai of
Maharashtra. In the year 2010, Reliance JIO overtook 96% share stock of the Infotel
organisation (IBSL) against a price value of INR 4800 Crore (US$700 million). This was an
unlisted organisation. However, it was the only organisation that had won the bid to have
broadband spectrum in as many as 22 Indian cities. After the acquisition, JIO launched the
infocomm service in the session 2016-17. There were some complications regarding the
launch of the Voice call feature by JIO along with their 4G network service. The sanction
was guaranteed by the payment of INR 165.8 Crore to the Indian government. Prashant
Bhushan launched a PIL against this acquisition calling it arbitrary as well as unreasonable.
However, the company sustained emergent in the accusation PIL and the Telecommunication
department gave a clean chit to JIO Infocomm. The department explained that the Indian
regulations of 3G spectrum and BWA spectrum did not restrict the company from providing
Voice calling service to the customers at no additional consumption charges. Within the first
moth after JIO’s launch, the company had acquired 16 million loyal customers. The urge that
JIO made in their advertisements, enticed the customers largely (Jio.com2018).
“India is a free Country and no independent citizen would ever pay a Telecom operator
any single rupee for making voice calls”

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In the year 2016, the company announced that it has global alliance with operators of
Mobile network all over the world. The company who had association with JIO are Deutsche
Telekom, Orange S.A., MTS, and Telecom Italia and so on. In fact, as per information
provided by Davis(2013), in the year 2016, JIO signed up a partnership with BSNL for
introducing the feature of Intra Circle roaming by means of which the LTE network of JIO
phones would be able to share the network strength of other JIO users in the vicinity.
1.2 Selection of the case study
In this case study analysis, the business strategy model that JIO adopted for India,
would be analysed. According to the data provided by Firdaus(2016), within 3 odd months
from the date of inception, 80% of the Indian telecommunication network users had
experienced Reliance JIO. Authors like Singh (2016), have opined that the brand popularity
of JIO network in India helped the organisation to encompass the Indian market with
acceleration and vigour. However, Firdaus(2016),, strictly disagrees with the conception of
havoc brand popularity. Business strategy of JIO is the most innovative telecom service
model in India. Where companies like Vodafone and Bharti Airtel have been unable to
provide 4G packages under INR 699, JIO provided the same service initially to the customers
free of cost. Mukesh Ambani, the owner to JIO, knew that he needed to deliver something
highly enticing to the customers to bring about market segmentation in the community of
Indian telecommunication service users, who have been engaged with big market players like
Vodafone, Airtel, and BSNL and so on. Mukesh Ambani realised that in this era of
information, people are looking for various ways to access mass data at a competitive price.
Reliance JIO’s strategy was to develop them as a solely dedicated network for 4G. In
order to launch an internal market survey in order to create a manipulated demand for 4G,
Reliance JIO teamed up with the state governments and installed free to access 4G speed

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routers which could provide 4G data to the customers in their 3G as well as their 2G phones
only. The routers were installed in most popular joints of the famous Indian cities, in order to
entice the potential customer groups. The free 4G services of JIO had been ongoing on till the
March 2017. The USP business model was utilised by the JIO service providers. Based on
this business model, the company tended to provide service at a tender or negligible cost.
After the welcome period offer ended the customers had to pay a single amount of sum for
availing the service. However, by then the customer base have become loyal to the JIO
services. In order to make sure that the company did not lose potential customers, the
company attempted to heavily attract the youth of the nation by entering in to strategic pact
with owners of Pokémon Go and Clash of Clans.
2. Discussion
2.1 Standard Criteria
The criteria of Thomsett (2002) can be applied here for the analysis of the success
factors of the JIO Company in India. It is evident that after the market introduction of JIO in
India, the company brought about a massive fragmentation of the base of customers of high
speed data. It is obvious that by providing top up based network access to the customers (that
also 2G and 3G), the MNCs like Airtel and Vodafone collected a huge amount of revenue.
Again as a alter effect, the government of India also earned a large amount of corporate tax
from these multinational companies. Besides the company also collected about 1% of every
recharge value as revenue. Other than that the companies also contributed to the Corporate
Welfare fund of the Indian government and lastly also paid Educational Cess. However, after
the advent of Reliance JIO in India, which is a native company of India, they would be liable
to pay much lesser corporate tax and would not pay the other taxes and corporate payments
incurred by the other companies. However, Mir and Pinnington(2013), informs that the

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company fulfilled one major perspective of the government. The Indian government had
launched “Digital India” by virtue of which the government planned to provide internet
connectivity to Indians of all economic background and at a low rate. The JIO project was
perfect for the plan and by means of operations of JIO network, the government took a big
stride towards the success of the campaign. The theory of Duncan, (2004) can also be applied
to assess the success factors of the launch of JIO in India. The multinational companies had
occupied almost the entire market in India. As an impact, large amount of national capital
drained out. Nevertheless, the JIO launch made digital tools available to almost 90% of the
Indians and the GDP growth boosted about 0.65% as an impact of the launch of JIO in India
(Mohapatra, Swain and Das 2015). Besides, the circulation of capital inside the Indian
Territory helped the government in many ways. Above everything, the country made a
majestic stride towards development. There have always been difference between criteria as
well as factors in case of business strategy of JIO network in India. Pinnington (2013), had
opined that businesses fail due to undermining of competitors. In this context, the JIO
network had played a major role they never undermined the planning as well as business
developments of other companies.
Companies like Airtel had launched joint ventures with Samsung to offer smart
phones to the people at INR 1399, which had a preinstalled Airtel connection and a
complimentary data for 6 months. Initially after the launch of this scheme in the Indiana
market, JIO had suffered a temporary setback and the average sales value of the company
depreciated by 2.5% approximately. Nevertheless, JIO launched an excellent counter strategy
in order to prevent the growth of Airtel. The company launched a feature phone with
preinstalled JIO aim. Moreover, the feature phone had all the aspects to enjoy advantages of
JIO on that phone. Moreover, the customers got the phone actually free of cost. The INR

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1500 that the customers invested behind the phone were reverted back to their bank accounts
after 6 months.
2.2 Identification and Justification of the Chosen criteria
In this report, the analysis have been centered up on the criteria provided by
(Thomsett, 2002). The JIO network in India flourished in 2017. However, contemporarily in
the industry, major players were Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, Idea and BSNL. The
monopoly of the Indian market was enjoyed by the major multinational players like Airtel
and Vodafone. As highlighted by Thomsett (2002), the company might incur some mistakes
in its course of execution of the product. They might cause harm to certain business criteria
and inflict losses to the company. Nevertheless, the end outcomes of the business campaign
often make people forget the flaws in the execution of the project. In this context, the author
provides the example of the project of the construction of the Opera House of Sydney.
Nevertheless, as per the information provided by Singh (2016), the company that undertook
to engineer the project, failed to work within the assigned budget. They consumed 16 times
of the assigned or projected budget of the company (Gupta and Jha, 2015). Moreover the
company took 4 times the time to accomplish the project. In spite of failing these criteria, the
impact created by the finally completed project was humongous.
The project actually tended to be a big success for the country in spite of being a
failure from the project management perspective. The people were mesmerised at the
grandeur and the magnificence of the construction and the basic flaws were reminiscing the
flaws of the company. This criteria have been identified for the analysis of the highlighted
business case as it directly aligns with the outcome of the launch of the JIO network in India.
The company almost destroyed the current industrial structure of telecommunication in India.

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Moreover JIO also set up a market monopoly by ousting the present market players from the
industrial structure.
3. Critical analysis of the Case based on chosen criteria
Reliance JIO of India entered the domestic market with a significant market capital of
$32 Billion in the market. In less than only 8 months the company’s Point of Uniqueness
strategy. The consumption of mobile data in India was turbocharged as a consequence of the
rate cut tariffs that was introduced by Reliance JIO. Ranging from TATA Indicomm to
Vodafone India Limited were unified to reduce the impact of Reliance JIO in the Indian
market. Among the Indian sub-continent, the Indian market had been the most potential
market for the telecom companies that generated more than $100 million from the Indian
market. However, the vision of Anil Ambani had been the democratisation of the digital
usage culture in India. Many rival companies have brought allegation that Reliance JIO
pertained to unfair business and corporate ethics.
Favourable regulatory behaviour of the Indian government accounted for the ample
spread of the Reliance JIO Company in India. Among ample criticism one major fact is that
the aggressive business strategy of Mukesh Ambani in India reshaped the telecommunication
industry of India. The subscription rate of JIO in India have been over 1.2 Billion units in
India, only second after a telecom company of China in China (Jha and Saha 2015). The JIO
Company almost ruined the business of Vodafone India, one of the leading business
organisations of the telecommunication industry of India, backed by eminent multi-billionaire
Bharti Mittal and Idea Cellular network of the family run conglomerate of Aditya Birla
Family. The criticisers of JIO just after the test phase, up hosted a rumour that the number of
call drops in the voice calls from JIO to the other networks were huge. The rivals complained
that there were a lot of technical issues in the innovative voice call process implemented by

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JIO network. However, JIO manager and engineers run a pilot test before the members of the
Telecommunication regulatory authority of India. The declaration from the end of the
regulatory authority confirmed that JIO is the world’s first voice call service providing
company that runs entirely on 4G data service and ruled out the allegations from the other
rivals regarding the interruptions caused in the Voice Call process. In fact, the authorities
provided that even if wavelength of the other voice service providers faced interruptions, JIO
was constant in its service (Joshi et al. 2018). JIO in act pulled up the millions of Indians to
the age of digitalisation. The launch of JIO sim card was no lesser event than the launch of i-
Phone in the Indian market.
4. Recommendations
In future JIO have a teaming up with Samsung in order to launch the 5G network in
India before any other market players. Nevertheless, the company has decided that they
would be the only market player to introduce 5G at a comprehensible rate. However, in this
regard, it might be recommended that Reliance JIO should not follow the same strategy of
late market entry. They have to make market entry prior to the other market players. This is
because the other market players who are working on 5G, would like to introduce 5G
packages which are competitively priced. Other than that the company have to identify the
potential market of 5G users in the Indian market (Gupta and Jha 2015). They product JIO
Giga that would be introduced in the market very soon and the company should bifurcate the
4G and the 5G market in India and depend upon futuristic demographic trends to change the
strategy of market operations.
5. Conclusions
Analysing the market demographics and other market success strategies, it can be
concluded that JIO is the only service provider that have been able to reduce the service

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charges of high end connections like 4G. Analysing the identified criteria in this report, it can
also been concluded that JIO is the first provider of 4G based voice call feature in the
smartphones without any external back up. Lastly, analysing the market challenges of JIO in
India, it can be easily suggested that JIO have taken entrepreneurship in the
telecommunication industry of India to an absolutely different level.

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6. References and Bibliography
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A Climate Study Amongst Employees of Hotel Industry 23-30, p.131.
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phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria. International Journal of Project
Management, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 337-342
Cleland, DI and Ireland, LR 2004, Project manager's portable handbook, 2 nd edition,
McGraw-Hill, New York. Coronado, RB and Antony, J 2002, ‘Critical success factors for the
successful implementation of six sigma projects in organisations’, The TQM Magazine, vol.
14 no. 2, pp.92 – 99.
Curwen, P. and Whalley, J., 2017. A tale of many auctions: mobile communications in India
struggle to overcome a dysfunctional structure. Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance,
19(3), pp.225-250.
Davis, K 2013, Different Stakeholder Groups And Their Perceptions Of Project Success,
International Journal of Project Management, accepted 5th June currently in press, JPMA-
01512, pp. 1-13.
Duncan, WR 2004, ‘Defining and Measuring Project Success’, Project Management Partners,
Available on 16 March 2017, from
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Firdaus, H., 2016. 4G LTE Network Growth in India and Security Issue in Network.
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Gochhait, S. and Tripathy, P.C., 2016. The game changer strategy of reliance jio–a case
study on predatory pricing. ICTM 2016, p.104.

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Gupta, A. and Jha, R.K., 2015. A survey of 5G network: Architecture and emerging
technologies. IEEE access, 3, pp.1206-1232.
Jha, A. and Saha, D., 2015, December. Techno-economic assessment of the potential for LTE
based 4G mobile services in rural India. In Advanced Networks and Telecommuncations
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Jio.com, (2018). About us. Available at: https://www.jio.com/ [Accessed: 29 August 2018]
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of 4G user equipment and implications on realistic RF EMF exposure assessments. IEEE
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Mir, FA and Pinnington, AH 2013, exploring the Value of Project Management: Linking
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11(2), pp. 1-15.
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Yogesh C. Joshi and Mukesh Pal 3. Social Media and E-Tail-A Theoretical Perspective 15-22

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