Oversize #7: Decoding Jio’s tech platform ambitions

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Editor's note: While we all were working from home the past few months, the richest man in Asia, Mukesh Ambani, raised an eye-watering $20 billion plus for Jio Platforms from investors across the world, including technology majors such as Facebook, Google and Intel. A fully owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd created last year, Jio Platforms is the holding company for the oil-to-retail conglomerate’s digital services businesses, as well as Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, India’s biggest telecom operator. Jio Platforms is positioned as a full-fledged technology company – not an offshoot interest of the oil company, or a side business to Jio’s telecom. We’ve all seen those fancy infographics where Jio is shown competing with everyone across domains—e-commerce, online pharmacy, streaming, messaging, enterprise collaboration and so on. Neil Shah, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, has noted that Jio could become the world's first “super operator”. The company’s platform ambitions are impressive, but the road to get there is rather trickier than it sounds. Building a tech company “Jio’s vision stands on two solid pillars. One is digital connectivity and the other is …