SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited or Jio as it is popularly known as a mobile network service based on LTE technology owned by the Reliance Industries. The company whose headquarters is in Navi Mumbai offers wireless 4 G network services and has the credit of being the only VoLTE operator in India currently.

The network covers the whole of India and is the largest Internet Service provider in the country. Reliance Jio launched its services for the first time in 2015 and became commercial in September 2016. The company currently has a gross revenue of 108.9 million as of the year 2016-17.

Strengths in the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Strengths are defined as what each business does best in its gamut of operations which can give it an upper hand over its competitors. The following are the strengths of Reliance Jio:

• Strongest Customer Acquisition strategy – Reliance Jio probably has the best customer acquisition strategy till date. The brand offered their services for free for 3-6 months to all their users. This resulted in millions of users using Reliance Jio and resulted in one of the best customer acquisition strategy in the history of telecom.
• Strong customer base – Jio boasts of a whopping 100 million subscribers in the first 170 days of its launch a record which no other provider has been able to register. This has also made Reliance Jio India’s largest Internet Service Provider.
• Technology – Jio currently uses the latest 4 G LTE technology which is one of the world’s best technologies for the future. This is supported by Voice over LTE which makes it scalable and supportive of 5G and 6 G technologies which are expected to be the future in wireless communication.
• Strong backing of parent company Reliance Industries: Reliance Industries is a credible brand which echoes with Indian sentiments and has high trust amongst customers. The association of Jio with Reliance acts as a core strength.
• Brand Management – The reason for the huge customer base of Reliance Jio is the brand management strategies that it has adopted. The right promotion backed by lucrative offers and credible brand ambassadors like ShahRukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan have helped in building connectivity with the customers.
• Fast and wide network – Reliance Jio has a presence in all 22 telecom circles in India and is known to be a robust and fast network with zero connectivity issues.
• Multiple offerings under a single name – Reliance Jio offers a variety of services like movies, games, shopping, chats, and messenger etc. giving the customer a lot of options to choose from.

Weaknesses in the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Weaknesses are used to refer to areas where the business or the brand needs improvement. Some of the key weaknesses of Reliance Jio are:

• Late entry into the market: Reliance Jio has made a late foray into the market which already had established players like Airtel and Vodafone who had occupied a place in the minds of the customer.
• Activation Issues – Reliance Jio faced numerous gestation issues owing to not being able to contain the huge volumes of customers it had acquired. On such was delays in SIM Card activation during the period that followed its launch.
• Pricing Controversies – Reliance Jio was criticised for having lowered its prices beyond what was ethical to penetrate into the market and this stirred allegations like corruption and money laundering against them.
• Too many freebies – Reliance Jio currently offers many services for free and this was one reason for share increase in sales. However, the company may not be able to afford all of them in the long run which may affect the business negatively.
• Data connection poor – The data connection is many times poor from Reliance Jio and the range is less causing slower loading speeds in selected regions.

Opportunities for the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Opportunities refer to those avenues in the environment that surrounds the business on which it can capitalize to increase its returns. Some of the opportunities include:

• Future driven technology – Reliance Jio uses VoLTE 4G network which is scalable to accommodate
• 5G and 6G technologies.This offers numerous avenues to Jio or future expansion of bandwidth.
• Apps – Reliance Jio has VoLTE which has a lot of scope in terms of bandwidth.Thus they can offer apps to customers which are chargeable or even free initially and pay per use later.
• Competitive Pricing Strategies – Reliance Jio prides itself on being a low-cost Internet service provider and mobile operator. This can be used as a positioning to target more markets and grow their market share since most of their competitors’ cannot afford their prices.
• Expansion to other countries – Currently Reliance Jio is operational only in India. There is, however, a lot of scope for expansion to foreign countries at least in the neighboring regions.

Threats in the SWOT analysis of Reliance Jio :

Threats are those factors in the environment which can be detrimental to the growth of the business. Some of the threats include:

• Risk of loss of customers – Customers prefer Jio primarily because of the low prices that they offer. At a stage when the company increases its price there may be a loss of customers.
• Removal of free services – Jio currently is associated with a lot of freebies.Once these are removed there may be a drop in sales for the company.
• Criticism and negative image – Reliance Jio has been embroiled in a lot of controversies from the time it was started. These have resulted in a negative brand image for the company.
• Poor Code of ethics – Many of the strategies adopted by Reliance Jio such as the low pricing, free bandwidth and market penetration strategies have been showcased as unethical and this may affect the goodwill of the business in the long run.