What can make a sixer for RJio?

Faisal Kawoosa

It goes without saying that being a new entrant Reliance Jio (RJio) needs to hit a few sixers to score some quick runs (Read: add subscribers). So it needs smart interventions to quickly make a decent subscriber base. Here is a list of six key things that will help it to achieve the goal a lot faster.

1. The first and the foremost thing RJio must do is the home delivery of SIMs. The festive season is around and a lot of new smartphones are expected to be bought. It is the right time when RJio can acquire new subscribers by making the SIM acquisition as friendly as they can. So, once the person generates the request, the SIM should be delivered at the doorsteps within 48 hours. Also, this can be helpful for people with special needs and elderly.

2. Second, on the website/app, they should develop a tool helping people in selecting the ideal 4G Smartphone. Agreed that most of the users these days are very well learned and know which phones they should buy, but the availability of increasing number of feature-rich phones often makes the selection process extremely difficult and tedious one. If a tool can provide a recommended list of handsets across brands based on the defined parameters by the user, it will be great relief!

3. The third thing is about iPhone. RJio must push the case with Apple and ensure a fraction of  the iPhone 7 shipments working on their network. A lot of iPhone users are deprived of the RJio services now and somebody really eager to use the services has no option but to buy an Android based 4G Smartphone.  Though RJio SIM will remain the alternative number for pretty some time for users, but in case of iPhone availability, at least RJio SIM will get a place in their primary device, which would be iPhone in such cases.

4. Fourth, there is some augmentation required in the subscription plans being offered. Within this, the first and foremost thing they should do is to have top-ups for prepaid users. This will enable prepaid users to recharge at lesser rates and spend as per usage adding more value to their spending. In India, as per latest MBit report, monthly average usage of 3G data was 753MB in 2015. So even to match this level of consumption, a user will have to recharge plan of Rs 149 valid for 28 days thrice to be able to get 0.9 GB of data. So, to match the national average, a subscriber has to spend Rs 450 a month. Here it makes the case of special top-up recharge plans. Also, there is no monthly plan offering 1GB of data. There could be additional prepaid plan of Rs 250 with 1GB data for a month. Also, some prepaid plans should be available with data plans for in-house use only without any added GBs for consuming over Jio WiFi hotspots. We have a lot of potential user base, radio cab drivers, for instance, who may never be in such a WiFi hotspot, yet will be using the data.

5. Fifth, RJio has to think of the bottom of the pyramid profiles as well to substantially increase the base. For this, it can offer insurance for every Jio subscriber of a certain profile linked to the subscribers Jan Dhan Bank account. This perfectly interweaves Digital India and Financial Inclusiveness. Asides, giving a reason for bottom of the pyramid profiles to be on board with RJio giving them a sense of security.

6. Sixth and last thing would be helping many actual users to rationalize the free net available at very odd hours. This will be mainly used by youth to download pirated content through torrents, etc. Though Jio has blocked many such resources. However, with the IT expertise in the country, this will always be a challenge and a porous affair. So, in the MyJio hub of applications, Jio should also develop a download manager. I tried to have a quick view of the download managers available, for instance on Android, but did not find a scheduling feature. This is an area for Jio to work and enable for users. If scheduling updates and downloads is facilitated through a download manager, then users could take the optimal use of free time and this could also help Jio in offloading the peak traffic.

All the above points will help Jio to speed up the process of subscriber acquisition and exhibit that differentiation, which they claim of. This will also help it to make significant inroads into already competitive telecom market of India where the competition is generally fought over price rather than strategies.

(Faisal is the Principal Analyst for Telecoms and ESDM at CMR. This list of suggestions is based on an internal huddle over Jio’s future between Thomas George, SVP and Head CMR and Faisal)