Source: qz.com
Just when Reliance was enjoying Jio’s popularity and success over making 4G Internet incredibly accessible to Indians, Mukesh Ambani, 60, comes at the top of the list for his game-changing efforts to bring the internet to India’s masses.
“Anything and everything that can go digital is going digital. India cannot afford to be left behind”, said Ambani to Forbes.
The above lines hold pretty true for Ambani considering the business success of Jio which made free or ultra-low cost high-speed internet available to an entire nation. He launched Reliance Jio in September 2016, a free service which touched the lives of many by making information flow easier. It was Ambani’s brainchild which made India among the top data consuming countries within months.
Notably, Jio also transposed the cellular network market drastically. A month after its launch, Jio claimed that the network had 16 million subscribers, which, it said was an all-time record. The competition in the telecom market got quite intense, as many other Telecom networks have introduced free 4G data offers and unlimited voice calling offers. For example Vodafone, !dea & Airtel introduced same 4G data offer in which new 4G customer will get 9 GB of additional 4G data by activating 1 GB plan. BSNL & Aircel launched the free voice calling offers.
Pointing to Reliance Jio, Forbes writes, “Bringing the Internet to India’s masses. Oil and gas tycoon entered the country’s telecom market with a bang, offering fast Internet at dirt-cheap prices. Gained 100 million customers in six months and set off a wave of consolidation in the market.”
The Forbes list includes a total of 25 “intrepid business leaders” who are “unsatisfied with the status quo” and “transforming their industries and changing the lives of billions of people around the globe.” Others from the technology space in the Forbes list include Mobileye co-founders Ziv Aviram and Amnon Shashua (second), Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield (third), Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collinson (fourth), Atlassian co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes (sixth), and TransferWise co-founders Taavet Hinrikus Kristo Kaarmann (ninth). Following them on the list are Twilio founder Jeff Lawson (12), Valve co-founder Gabe Newell (14), Lens Technology founder Zhou Qunfei (16), Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel (20), and Didi Chuxing founder Cheng Wei (23).