Mukesh bets big on Reliance Jio

Mumbai, August 31

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is betting at least $20 billion on building, from scratch, a national digital empire stretching from phones and hardware to home entertainment and custom-made apps.

The ambitious Jio project could make Reliance the most comprehensive provider of telecom and internet services across India and give it unprecedented access to the country's untapped 'big data': how millions eat, shop and have fun.

"For Reliance... data is the new oil, and intelligent data is the new petrol," Ambani said in March, explaining his drive to move closer to India's consumers.

Reliance has said little publicly about Jio, and even less about the potential for wide-scale data mining in a country where consumers have not, to date, made a big deal about online privacy. But top executives are clear on the opportunity.

"It's called Deep Packet Inspection, and what you can do with the analytics of that is mind-boggling," said a senior Reliance executive, referring to a practice that digs into 'packets' of data created by computers for efficiency, mining them for information.

Jio is unlikely to contribute significantly to Reliance profits anytime soon, but is hugely significant for its future. Reliance has dabbled previously in consumer sectors, yet Jio is seen as an opportunity for Ambani to set a new course for a company still dominated by his late father, its founder. reuters