Will Reliance Jio now look to create web series for subscribers?

Key Highlights

• The fourth largest telecom operator has 12% market share and 14.59 crore subscriber base.
• Jio is expected to make Rs 100-150 in incremental ARPU.
• Most of India’s data traffic comes from regional video streaming.

After creating havoc in the telecom sector, Reliance Jio’s next move might be to get started on web series. The company has reportedly initiated primary talks with web content developers.

“Some independent producers and writers have pitched scripts for web series and other formats to Reliance Jio,” a report by Live Mint quoted sources on Monday.

Jio that has majority of its subscribers that flock to its data packs for viewing videos online have used 165 crore hours of ‘high speed video every month’, Chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, Mukesh Ambani said at the company’s AGM.

Reliance Jio reported an average revenue per user at Rs 156.40 per month in Q2 FY18.

With the creation of video content and web series, the report cited estimated increase in incremental average revenue per user to be Rs 100-150.

The company ranked fourth in market share and had a total of 14.59 crore subscribers in October, as per TRAI data.

Jio already has offered its Jio TV app subscribers 432 live channels, inclusive of Star India’s online entertainment and streaming platform Hotstar.  

The service began in April 2017 with content streaming in six different languages, a report by ET said.

This is imperative as most of India’s data traffic comes from regional video streaming, as per a CRISIL report dated July 25.

“The video viewership is dominated by regional languages – nearly 60% in Hindi and some 35% in other regional languages,” the report said.

“Data from operators show that videos contributes nearly 80% to total data traffic (direct and indirect) in India,” it added.

Mobile data consumption was estimated to grow four-fold in the next five years by CRISIL. The analysts predicted data consumption to reach 2.5 GB per user per month.

However, operator revenues may only be grounded with the looming threat of Wi-Fi in public places.

“One reason mobile traffic has been able to sustain despite the fact that service levels of Indian mobile networks are not at par with international standards is poor Wi-Fi infrastructure. India lacks in Wi-Fi hotspots, which is reflected in the time spent on surfing internet over Wi-Fi being a low 18% compared with 50% in the US,” the report added.