In this presentation, the speaker outlines how Indian telecom giant Jio grew from zero subscribers in 2016 to over 400 million users by 2020, driven by a bold strategy of offering free, unlimited 4G data at launch. The talk walks through Jio’s rapid revenue growth, the simultaneous drop in data costs and the availability of cheap smartphones that together brought millions of Indians online. It highlights the viral word‑of‑mouth effect of the “free internet” offer, the subsequent gradual monetization with ultra‑low pricing, and the massive increase in data consumption per user. The speaker extracts several business lessons—leveraging a compelling free offer, timing the market, zigging when competitors zag, and slowly ramping prices—while noting the broader ecosystem impact, such as soaring YouTube viewership and a partnership with Google to develop affordable smartphones. The video concludes with a forward‑looking view of Jio’s potential to reach a billion users and a plug for the speaker’s book, Leveling Up.
Chapters
Alright, so today I'm gonna talk about how one company went from 0 subscribers to 400 million subscribers in a span of 4 years. Now, this is an Indian telecommunications company I'm talking about called Jio. And Jio, they leveraged the power of free. I'm gonna give you a little more details in a second, but I'm gonna pull up my screen over here. And my screen, basically here you can see, let's take a look at the operating revenue of this company from 2017 This is 81 billion rupees, and it kind of continues to go up here. Now, if we look at Wikipedia, we know that the Q2 2020 revenue, $3 billion. Okay, and so they're driving a ton of revenue, and they were actually founded in 2007. But this is— keep in mind, this is Jio Telecommunications, right? So let's take a look at what Preeti here is saying on Twitter. So, people outside of India don't fully understand the Jio effect and how transformational it was. And by the way, Jio partnered up with Google, just so you know, that's how powerful they are. And Google knows that they are, they're a force to be reckoned with. So, basically what they did was, you know, in 2016, they launched and they gave Indians unlimited 4G internet for free. So, you know, look at all the people that lined up over here, right? And so, when you give someone, the offer is amazing, it's, I'm gonna give you free internet. And it's not only just any basic internet, I mean, it's 4G unlimited internet, so it's the highest quality at the time. So the offer is amazing, it's almost too good to be true. And so when you lead with an amazing offer like that, of course people are gonna, you know, line up like that, and they're also gonna tell their friends. Because keep in mind, look at these people that are lined up right here. When they go to lunch, when they go to dinner, when they meet with their friends, what did you do today? I lined up for the free internet. The geo internet—it's amazing. Finally got it, and you know the wait was worth it. And so word of mouth spreads. It spreads like a. It spreads. I don't feel like the using the word virus, but it spreads like crazy, right? And when an offer is that good, when it's free, of course it's going to go around, right? And the other thing is, when you think about geo, the TAM—the total addressable market—is everybody needs internet, right? And you know a lot of people in third world countries are coming online right now. India's becoming a lot stronger, and this just seems really smart. So, you know, goes on to say here, around the same time, cheap mobile phones were also becoming available. These 2 factors, cheap internet plus cheap hardware, brought millions of Indians online starting in 2016, including people living in rural villages. So, you can see what's going on here. Okay, data consumption in 2016, right? Boom, it gets, it gets crazier and crazier. This is 4x over here. Right? So this is India right here. Look at India, look at this, 4x increase over here. And if we go back just a couple years to 2012, 2011, not a lot of people are consuming data, which means not a lot of people are online. And the cost for data has gone down quite a bit. Look at this line over here. It was way too expensive, cost prohibitive before. Everybody, all the other countries are already pretty low, but look at just, you know, they managed to Coming at the right time where the costs were, where it made sense, and where it made sense for them to give it away for free, and they did that, right? And so, there's a couple lessons here, you know, the power of free, the power of an amazing offer, the power of timing as well, and the power of zigging where other people are zagging, right? If other people are going a certain way and they decide, hey, I'm gonna give away stuff for free, guess what? They take market share away. So then in 2017, they stopped giving away the data for free. They started charging for it, but they kept prices insanely low. So they started to slowly ramp it up, right? So instead of saying, hey, we're gonna charge you maybe $10 a month, $20 a month, we're gonna start to charge you $3 a month because, hey, the service is good, right? You want to keep it going? Okay, let's just charge a little bit. Indians have been hooked to the internet already, so you got them hooked on the, you know, the drug, right? So they went from zero customers in 2016 to having now over 400 million subscribers. And Indians have gone from consuming just 700 megabytes of data per month to 11 gigabits. Massive difference there. So, now, you know, obviously if you have a lot of people hanging out on the internet, that's gonna have cascading effects everywhere, right? Because when you use the internet, you're communicating with people, you're being productive, you're learning, right? And that helps the economy as a whole. And so, Jio is well positioned. Look at this, they have 9— they're on track to do 974 million users by 2025. And also, you know, let's take a look at this. Geo has immensely helped many Silicon Valley social networks as well. So that's why you look at Google. Let's take a look at this over here. So in 2017, YouTube viewers, 168 viewers— sorry, millions viewers— and now 342 million predicted for 2021. So if you look at it here, there's a lot of lessons, right? Can you create an irresistible irresistible offer, and can you give it away for free, or how cheap can you give it away for, and can you slowly ramp the cost over time? And what is your long-term vision on it? Because obviously they have a long-term vision. If we give it away for free, there's gonna be these effects, and people are gonna remember us. They're gonna remember us as the company that gave this away for free. And I think it's also, it's also being willing to, like I said earlier, being willing to zig when other people are zagging, right? And so I think there's a lot to learn from this. This is why the company is doing so well right now. This is how they went from 0 to 400 million, and you know, I guess they're on track for over a billion users. And by the way, they're they're a conglomerate. Geo has a lot of other things going on. So to be able to control the internet like this, it says a lot. So excited to see what happens with the company in the next couple years. But this type of long-term vision thinking, I think I believe they they worked out some type of partnership with them as well. So. Oh yeah, here's what it says, Google and Jio are now working to jointly develop an entry-level affordable smartphone. Alright, so that is it for today. Go to levelingup.com to learn more about the book I have, Leveling Up, which is about playing the game of life and playing the game of business, and we'll catch you later.
