MUMBAI: JioMart, Reliance Retail's e-commerce, has gone live on WhatsApp in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan in Mumbai within days of announcing a tie-up with Facebook’s WhatsApp. This enables grocery shopping easier for people in these regions. JioMart seeks to leverage WhatsApp’s unrivalled reach of more than 400 million users.
As part of the collaboration, users can find local stores around them on WhatsApp, talk to shop owners and place orders from WhatsApp. People can initiate an order by texting “Hi” to +91-8850008000, which prompts a link that opens a mini store on the browser. The order details are then shared by JioMart with local stores over WhatsApp. The customer then has to pick up the order from the store.
JioMart, a joint venture between Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio Platform, seeks to test the novel ordering system on WhatsApp, as a consequence of its association with Facebook. Last week, Facebook announced it was investing $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms to secure a 9.9 per cent stake.
WhatsApp, however, is yet to get approval from the government for a pan-India rollout.
The company is replicating O2O model, (online-to-offline marketplace), which was pioneered by China’s Alibaba. This model enables a customer to search online for products and then buy through an offline channel.
Mumbai: Facebook has bought a 9.9 per cent stake in Reliance Jio for $5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore), the telecom unit of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). The multibillion-dollar deal gives the social media giant a firm foothold in a fast-growing massive market and helps the Indian oil-to-telecom conglomerate to significantly cut debt.
This investment by Facebook values Jio platforms at Rs 4.62 lakh crore pre-money enterprise value ($65.95 billion, assuming a conversion rate of Rs 70 to a US Dollar). Facebook’s investment will translate into a 9.99 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis.
Mark Zuckerberg, in a statement, said: “There's a lot going on in the world right now, but I wanted to share an update on our work in India. Facebook is teaming up with Jio Platforms; we're making a financial investment, and more than that, we're committing to work together on some major projects that will open up commerce opportunities for people across India. India is home to the largest communities on Facebook and WhatsApp, and a lot of talented entrepreneurs. The country is in the middle of a major digital transformation and organizations like Jio have played a big part in getting hundreds of millions of Indian people and small businesses online.”
Reliance Industries Ltd chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said: “When Reliance launched Jio in 2016, we were driven by the dream of India’s digital Survodaya – India’s inclusive digital rise to improve the quality of life of every single Indian and to propel India as the world’s leading Digital Society. All of us at Reliance are therefore humbled by the opportunity to welcome Facebook as our long-term partner in continuing to grow and transform the digital ecosystem of India for the benefit of all Indians. The synergy between Jio and Facebook will help realise prime minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ Mission with its two ambitious goals — ‘ease of living’ and ‘ease of doing business’ – for every single category of Indian people without exception. In the post-Corona era, I am confident of India’s economic recovery and resurgence in the shortest period of time. The partnership will surely make an important contribution to this transformation.”
Jio Platforms, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd, is a next-generation technology company building a digital society for India by bringing together Jio’s leading digital apps, digital ecosystems and India’s #1 high-speed connectivity platform under one umbrella. Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, which provides connectivity platform to over 388 million subscribers, will continue to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms.
Jio’s vision is to enable a digital India for 1.3 billion Indians and Indian businesses, especially small merchants, micro-businesses and farmers. Jio has brought transformational changes in the Indian digital services space and propelled India on the path towards becoming a global technology leader and among the leading digital economies in the world.
Jio has built a world-class digital platform powered by leading technologies such as broadband connectivity, smart devices, cloud and edge computing, big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Augmented and Mixed Reality and Blockchain.
Jio has created an eco-system comprising network, devices, applications, content, service experiences and affordable tariffs for every Indian to experience the Jio Digital Life. During the current Covid-19 crisis, Jio’s platforms have been a dependable and inclusive Digital Lifeline for India, said a company statement.
As one of the largest countries in the world, India is home to some of Facebook’s most thriving communities on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. Over the years, Facebook has invested in India based on a strong belief in country’s entrepreneurial talent and opportunity, to help create meaningful impact for Indians and Indian businesses using their multiple platforms.
The partnership between Facebook and Jio is unprecedented in many ways. This is the largest investment for a minority stake by a technology company anywhere in the world and the largest FDI in the technology sector in India. The investment values Jio Platforms amongst the top five listed companies in India by market capitalisation, within just three and a half years of launch of commercial services, validating Reliance Industries’ capability in incubating and building disruptive next-generation businesses, while delivering market defining shareholder value.
The investment will enable new opportunities for businesses of all sizes, but especially for small businesses across India and create new and exciting digital ecosystems that will empower, enrich and uplift the lives of all 1.3 billion Indians.
This partnership will accelerate India’s all-round development, fulfilling the needs of Indian people and the Indian economy. The partnership focus will be India’s 60 million micro, small and medium businesses, 120 million farmers, 30 million small merchants and millions of small and medium enterprises in the informal sector, in addition to empowering people seeking various digital services.
The partnership assumes special significance for India in the wake of the severe disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian — and the global — economy. In the post-COVID era, comprehensive digitalisation will be an absolute necessity for revitalisation of the Indian economy.
Concurrent with the investment, Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail Limited (Reliance Retail) and WhatsApp have also entered into a commercial partnership agreement to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s New Commerce business on the JioMart platform using WhatsApp and to support small businesses on WhatsApp. WhatsApp already plays an important role in helping people and businesses connect in India. Reliance Retail’s New Commerce platform, JioMart, is being built in partnership with millions of small merchants and kirana shops to empower them to better serve the needs of Indian consumers. The companies will work closely to ensure that consumers are able to access the nearest kiranas which can provide products and services to their homes by transacting seamlessly with JioMart using WhatsApp.
The transaction is subject to regulatory and other customary approvals. Morgan Stanley as financial advisor and AZB & Partners and Davis Polk & Wardwell as counsels advised on the transaction.
MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel (Airtel), India’s largest integrated telco, today announced its collaboration with Cisco to launch India’s largest 5G-ready, 100G IP and optical integrated network designed to enhance network availability, capacity and scale. The deployment is part of Airtel’s initiative to build a 5G ready network that continues to serve the growing demand for high speed data services in the country.
India is currently the world’s second-largest telecommunications market with a subscriber base of 1.17 billion. Cisco’s recent Annual Internet Report forecasts there will be 67.2 million 5G connections in India by 2023 (4.9 per cent of total mobile connections), and 66 per cent of all devices will be mobile-connected by 2023, (34 per cent will be wired or connected over Wi-Fi).
Airtel’s network serves over 280 million mobile subscribers across 4G and 2G technologies. This new IP over ethernet over fibre network is the largest hyper-complex brownfield network transformation of its kind in India, collapsing multiple legacy domains to build a flatter, simpler and automated 5G-ready IP network for enhanced customer experiences. It integrates Cisco IP and optical solutions along with segment routing to more easily extend services in rural communities while significantly improving network availability and creating cost efficiencies.
The simple, flexible and self-healing architecture is built with an agile, programmable and software-defined platform to deliver exponential mobile internet growth. It has already realized significant speeds with scale to enable new, advanced B2B and B2C services. The open standards architecture with automation brings in efficiencies for new and legacy infrastructure, eliminating manual touchpoints in a brownfield environment.
“Airtel continues to transform its network to ensure greater availability and reach across India to deliver best-in-class mobile experience for our customers,” Bharti Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon said. “Our ongoing collaboration with Cisco is critical in helping us to be 5G-ready, collapsing multiple legacy domains to build a flatter, simpler and automated network with more bandwidth to support internet services and the endless growth in consumer and business applications people rely on every day,” he added.
“Airtel is transforming its network to be modern, adaptable and scalable to accommodate the phenomenal mobile growth in India,” Cisco Service Provider Business, India and SAARC managing director Anand Bhaskar said. “Together we are delivering a highly-scalable IP and optical network throughout India that enables broader mobile access to connect more people and more businesses who can do more with the internet."
MUMBAI: The Wuhan-originating coronavirus is leaving its impact on industry confabs in Europe and Asia.
The Mobile World Congress which was scheduled to be held from 24-27 February in Barcelona was cancelled yesterday, following the pullout by a large number of partner companies, with concerns over the spread of the viral menace. LG, Ericsson, Nvidia, Intel, Vivo, Nokia, Amazon, Sony are some of the major players who decided to give it a skip.
Chinese companies are some of the major participants in the Mobile World Congress and with many embassies in China refusing to issue visas to travellers, many of them would not have been in a postion to attend.
Keeping all this in mind, the GSMA – which organises the congress – decided to cancel it for the year.
Then the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) announced on 13 February that it would push forward the dates for its Hong Kong International Film and TV Market (FilMart) 2020 from 25-28 March to 27-29 August 2020.
“The safety and well-being of our exhibitors and participants has always been our priority,” said the HKTDC in a note sent out to participants. “The decision is made in response to the preventive measures taken by the Hong Kong SAR government and health authorities worldwide to contain the novel coronavirus epidemic. Your admission badge record will still be valid for the postponed FilMart 2020. Details will be announced later.”
MUMBAI: Reliance Entertainment and Amblin Partners’ 1917 has won seven awards at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), held last evening at the Royal Albert Hall in London including Outstanding British Film and Best Film and Best Director (Sam Mendes).
The World War 1 thriller, which was nominated in 9 categories at BAFTA, also won awards for Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Production Design (Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales), Best Sound (Scott Millan, Oliver Tarney, Rachael Tate, Mark Taylor and Stuart Wilson) and Special Visual Effects (Greg Butler, Guillaume Rocheron and Dominic Tuohy).
Sam Mendes, who is the first British winner of the Best Director BAFTA since Danny Boyle’s 2009 win for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ said,"There's the personal delight in seeing a story very close to me and my family be developed and enlarged but the massive thing has been audiences going in large numbers.” He added, “None of us knew if an audience would turn up, it wasn't certain at all. It's coincided with awards season and the fact this is still number one in the UK after four weeks, [the awards have] really alerted people to the fact the movie is on, it rarely happens like that."
Inspired by the stories that Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes’ grandfather told him, 1917 has had a dream run this awards season with 10 Oscar nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director,’ for the forthcoming 92nd Academy Awards, which is scheduled to be held at 9th February 2020 in Los Angeles. 1917 has previously won three awards at the Critics’ Choice Awards 2020 for ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Cinematographer’ and ‘Best Editing’. The film also won accolades at the 77th Golden Globes, with an award for Best Picture in the Drama category, and the Best Director’s award for Sam Mendes.
The film also bagged an award for ‘Best Feature Film’ at Directors Guild of America Awards and honored with the ‘Best Picture’ award at the Producers Guild of America Awards. Another feather in the cap was Roger Deakins winning the ‘Top Feature Award’ from the American Society of Cinematographers for his outstanding work in the movie.
DreamWorks Pictures and Reliance Entertainment present, in association with New Republic Pictures, a Neal Street production, produced in association with Mogambo, Sam Mendes film: 1917, starring George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, with Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch. ‘1917’ is directed by Sam Mendes. A Reliance Entertainment release in India, the film is still running in theatres.
MUMBAI: Starting from today the premium shows of Travelxp 4K are available to viewers in Italy on Channel number 225 on tivùsat, Italy’s free-to-air satellite platform. Travelxp 4K, the world’s first 4K HDR Channel made its debut in Ultra HD from January 2017 on SES’s Ultra HD distribution platform in North America, on Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13.0 in Europe, Middle East and North Africa & SES Astra 19.2 in Europe.
Talking about the launch, tivùsat president Beatrice Coletti commented, “Tivùsat is proud to offer its viewers the Travelxp 4K channel. Viewers can now enjoy the feeling of total involvement in the content, thanks to the ultra-high definition details, the colours, clarity and sense of depth that the channel offers.”
“Tivùsat is a great platform for airing the premium HDR content on Travelxp 4K in HLG HDR, 10- bit REC 2100 color space and 50 frames. Apart from the vivid and immersive picture quality our channel offers, we are also excited about showcasing the original and interesting travel content we produce in diverse genres, to the people in Italy.” said Travelxp managing director – Europe Sumant Bahl.
With 1000+ hours of premium travel & lifestyle content, Travelxp is distributed in over 30+ countries, in over 15+ languages, in over 93+ million homes. Travelxp is also the single largest producer of travel content and a global innovation leader in 4K HDR technology. With a diverse programming mix, all Travelxp shows are original in-house productions filmed across 55+ countries with multi-cultural hosts from across the world.
MUMBAI: Move over US. Now it’s the turn of India, which has just beaten it for the first time on an annual basis to take the second spot as far as smartphon shipments are concerned. In 2019, more than 158 million phones were shipped in the country, registering a seven per cent year on year growth. That means so many more phones consuming video and data on their apps like Hotstar, Zee5, SonyLiv, Voot, Netflix, Prime Video and what have you.
Market research firm Counterpoint released the data over the weekend. The company said that the sales were spurred by the growth of the mid-tier segment in which Chinese brands introduced many flagship grade features and capabilities, thus luring customers to buy their first or second smartphones. Additionally, the online channels became the preferred selling platforms to introduce these products faster into the market.
Says Counterpoint Research associate director Tarun Pathak: “Although the rate of growth for the smartphone market was only single digit for the first time on an annual basis, India is underpenetrated relative to many other markets; 4G penetration among subscribers being around 55 per cent. Going forward, we expect this demand to grow further due to the ongoing transition from feature phones to smartphones and progressive diffusion of key smartphone features to the entry-level price tier as a result of hyper-competition among multiple players. We further expect brands to have multi-tier strategies involving partnerships in the mobile ecosystem from hardware, software and services, thus creating opportunities within different segments like entertainment, gaming, financial services and more.”
While the smartphone market registered YoY growth, the feature phone market saw a steep decline of around 42 per cent YoY in 2019 and 38 per cent YoY in Q4 2019. This is due to a slowdown in new shipments from Reliance Jio. However, the players such as itel, Lava, Nokia and Micromax registered positive annual growth despite the overall segment decline.
MUMBAI: The board of directors of telecom player Bharti Airtel Ltd approved the telecom operator’s proposal to raise up to $3 billion in account of the issue of overdue fees it owes the government.
According to a filing with the stock exchange, the company will raise funds worth $2 billion through one or more qualified institutions placement, public and/or private offerings of equity shares, compulsory convertible debentures or other convertible securities or warrants or American depositary receipts (ADR) global depositary receipts ( GDR) or a combination.
Airtel will also raise funds through issuance of unsecured and/or secured, listed and/or unlisted, foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) or other similar security denominated in foreign currency (ies) or a combination aggregating up to $1 billion.
The board also authorised the special committee of directors for taking necessary steps for implementing the aforesaid proposals. Airtel reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 230.45 billion rupees ($3.21 billion) for the September quarter. According to media reports, Airtel owes $13 billion to the department of telecommunications (DoT).
MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel today announced a content partnership with CuriosityStream, the award-winning global media company that delivers the world of factual entertainment in one mind-expanding place.
Launched by John Hendricks, the visionary founder of Discovery Channel, CuriosityStream lets viewers explore their passions and discover new ones with thousands of films and series covering space, art, volcanoes, history, travel, cars, architecture, dinosaurs and so much more.
The complete content catalogue of CuriosityStream, including exclusive originals that can’t be seen anywhere else, will now be available to Airtel customers on its converged digital entertainment platform – Airtel Xstream.
Airtel Thanks Gold and Platinum customers will get complimentary access to exciting CuriosityStream content on the Airtel Xstream app and airtelxstream.com. The content will also be available on the Airtel Xstream Hybrid Box and Airtel Xstream Smart Stick.
Airtel is the first partner to bring CuriosityStream to India, directly to viewers who are looking for the kind of engaging factual shows that the traditional networks have abandoned. CuriosityStream covers the full breadth and depth of the non-fiction genre – from science and technology to history and nature to society and lifestyle.
With this latest partnership, Airtel has further strengthened its digital entertainment play. The Airtel Xstream platform offers over 10,000 movies and shows along with 400 plus LIVE channels. This content can be accessed across all screens – smartphone, TV, and PC through Xstream applications and smart devices.
Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel said: “We are thrilled to join hands with CuriosityStream to introduce India to best-in-class factual entertainment content, which will be available to customers on the screen of their choice. There is growing demand in India for quality content and we believe that CuriosityStream’s award winning series will add to our effort of delivering a differentiated experience to our customers.”
Sunil Taldar, CEO and Director – DTH, Bharti Airtel said, “We are delighted to partner with CuriosityStream for our Airtel Xstream platform and bring some really exciting and premium content to Indian homes. With the new Airtel Xstream Hybrid Box, customers can enjoy the best of linear TV and online content, including exclusive factual shows commissioned by CuriosityStream.”
Clint Stinchcomb, President and CEO, CuriosityStream said, “CuriosityStream is the definitive experience for satisfying curiosity and supercharging the imagination. Our partnership with Airtel is built for today and for the future, reaching the important Indian audience at scale through Airtel's vast footprint and multiple screens. We are excited to team with Airtel for this first-of-a-kind partnership.”
The Airtel CuriosityStream partnership was secured by media distribution firm Brandwith.
BENGALURU: Has the broadband internet subscriber growth in the country started petering out in 2019? Analysis of Telecom subscription data furnished by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) indicates that month-on-month subscriber growth rates are reducing despite the stupendous growth at the start of calendar year 2019 (CY 2019). The latest data from TRAI is for the month ended 30 September 2019 or Sep-19 (month under consideration). Sep-19 saw broadband internet subscribers grow by just 0.999 crore in net absolute numbers, or by 1.62 percent from the previous month Aug-19. In absolute number of subscriber additions, Sep-19 was ranked 15 over a 21 month period and was ranked 17 over the same period in percentage terms.
Please refer to the figure below:
During the 21 month period under consideration in this paper, Jan-19 saw the highest number of subscriber additions at 2.149 crore (21.49 million or 214.9 lakh). Jan-19 was ranked third during the 21 month period in terms of percentage growth at 4.1 percent. Mar-18 saw the highest subscriber growth in percentage terms at 5.2%. In absolute numbers, Mar-19 saw the second highest number of subscriber addition at 2.054 crore (20.54 million, 205.4 lakh).
Please refer to the figure below:
Broadband Internet Segment Trends
TRAI has segmented Broadband internet into 3 main platforms, viz. Wired; Mobiles (Phones and dongles); and Fixed wireless- WiFi, Wi Max, Point to Point, Radio, Vsat. As has been the norm, the Mobile (Phones and dongles) had the highest subscriber growth in terms of absolute numbers at 0.929 crore or 9.29 million or 92.9 lakh (at 1.97 percent) in Sep-19 over Aug-19. In percentage terms, the Wired Broadband internet segment had the highest growth in Sep-19 over Aug-19 at 3.96 percent. Please refer to the figure below:
Overall Broadband Internet Subscribers on all platforms
The top five service providers constituted 98.96 percent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of Sep-19. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd 35.593 crore (355.93 million, 3,559.3 lakh) subscribers, Bharti Airtel with 12.783 crore (127.83 million, 1,278.3 lakh) subscribers, Vodafone Idea with 11.219 crore (112.19 million, 1,121.9 lakh) subscribers, BSNL with 2.152 crore (21.52 million, 215.2 lakh) subscribers and Atria Convergence 0.148 crore (1.48 million, 14.8 lakh) subscribers. All the five players saw subscriber growth in Sep-19.
Wireless Broadband Internet Subscribers
The top five Wireless Broadband Service providers were Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd with 35.522 crore (355.22 million, 3,552.2 lakh) subscribers , Bharti Airtel with 12.542 crore (125.42 million, 1,254.2 lakh) subscribers, Vodafone Idea with 11.217 crore (112.17 million, 1,121.7 lakh) subscribers, BSNL with 1.282 crore (12.82 million, 128.2 lakh) subscribers and MTNL with 0.021 crore (0.21 million, 2.1 lakh) subscribers. The first four ranks saw their subscribers grow, while MTNL witnessed a flat growth in Sep-19.
Wired Broadband Internet Subscribers
The top five Wired Broadband Service providers were BSNL with 0.869 crore (8.69 million, 86.9 lakh) subscribers, Bharti Airtel with 0.241 crore (2.41 million, 24.1 lakh) subscribers, Atria Convergence Technologies with 0.148 crore (1.48 million, 14.8 lakh) subscribers, Hathway Cable & Datacom with 0.086 crore (0.86 million, 8.6 lakh) subscribers and You Broadband with 0.075 crore (0.75 million, 7.5 lakh) subscribers.
Wired broadband subscriber base grew by 69,000 according to TRAI data, but the top 5 Wired Broadband Internet players saw their combined subscriber base erode by 80,000. This indicates that the other internet service players which include MSOs’s and LCOs’ added 0.0149 crore (0.149 million or 1.49 lakh). Among the top 5 wired broadband internet players, it was only the public sector that saw erosion of its subscriber base – by 0.01 crore (0.1 million, 1 lakh). ACT and Hathway saw subscriber additions of 10,000, while Airtel and You Broadband saw no fresh subscriber additions.
