Reliance Jio and Facebook

Both companies want to dominate the Indian market. It is unlikely they have enough reasons to do it together.

Late last year, Reliance Industries Ltd invited over analysts covering the company’s telecom business, Reliance Jio Infocomm. The idea was to help them understand how to look at the venture, and hence value the company and its future prospects. In a presentation that didn’t receive as much public attention as it should have, Reliance said it was unfair to look at Jio as a telecom venture. No, it is unlike a Bharti Airtel or a Vodafone Idea; those are telecom plays but, well, Jio is different, or so the company argued.

Reliance’s spiel was that Jio should be compared to …