Jio Platforms plans to raise revenue per customer mainly by selling more services rather than lifting tariffs, though it keeps the option of higher prices, Managing Director Akash Ambani said on Thursday, days before the Reliance Industries unit opens what would be India's largest initial public offering.
"We always have the ability to take up prices," Ambani told a press conference in Mumbai, but the company would rather give customers more services and charge for them than rely on price per gigabyte as its main lever.
Asked whether a tariff increase was coming, he gave no timeline. He said telecom spending per user as a share of India's per-capita income had roughly halved to about 1% since Jio's 2016 launch, which he called headroom.
Chief Executive Pankaj Pawar said tariffs were only one of several levers.
Ambani said Jio charges about Rs 4.9 per gigabyte against an industry average of Rs 7.5, with customers using 43.7 GB a month.
"We expect a USD 1.4-trillion digital economy by FY31; we will take a huge market share of this," Ambani said, naming mobile, home broadband and enterprise and international services as the growth engines.
He said Jio carries more than 60% of India's wireless data traffic.
New services outside Jio's licensed telecom business, such as a voice-AI feature announced at Reliance's annual meeting, could push its EBITDA margin above the current level. The margin was 53.3 per cent in April-June, up from about 50% three years ago, he added.
On overseas expansion, Ambani said Jio would offer its in-house network technology to foreign operators as a managed-service partner, not by selling hardware or software licences, and without heavy capital spending.
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