Reliance Jio takes half the time taken by Instagram to cross the 50million subscriber mark by signing 6lakh customers a day

Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio’s entry into the telecom industry has been exactly how it was expected to be, big, disruptive and controversial. Even before Reliance Jio was launched there was a huge uproar in the industry regarding the long running trial testing of the services but it continues even after the commercial launch and is likely to extend till March 2017. And thanks to the free services, according to sources Jio has crossed the 50 million subscriber mark in an extremely short span of less than three months.

Reliance Jio has achieved this feat a lot faster than even the most popular social networking sites or apps in India, for instance, Facebook and WhatsApp took over 40 months to tap into 50 million subscribers, Instagram took six months to reach the mark and Twitter took about nine months to hit 50million subscription. Jio has set a new record by signing up 6lakh subscribers in a day which is roughly about 1000 customers per minute since the time it was launched on September 5th, making it the fastest growing company in the world yet short of Mukesh Ambani’s target of 100million subscribers by the end of the year.

Achieving the 50million subscriber mark at such a speed is also owing to the huge growth the telecom industry has seen in the past couple of years. For instance, now India’s top telecom operator, Airtel took over a decade to reach the 50 million subscriber mark when it launched in 1996. Airtel was also country’s first 4G player but with Reliance Jio’s entry mainly as a 4G player, Jio’s customer base has now grown five times that of Airtel’s 10 million 4G subscribers.

Also Jio’s popularity has a lot to do with its controversial ‘Welcome Offer’ where customers get free access to all Jio services till December end. And the long running trial testing has been a major reason for a massive war of words with the incumbent telecom operators. While the free offer has certainly a lot to do with the spike in the subscription that Jio is seeing but lately the customers have complained about deterioration in Jio services. Also Jio has accused incumbent operators for using their dominant position to stifle Jio’s entry in the telecom industry by not adhering to the license conditions.

While Reliance Jio is certainly on its way to “create a world record by acquiring 100 million customers in the shortest possible time”, it will have to make sure the services are up to the mark in order to retain the subscribers on the Jio network way after the free trial.