At one side when the Indian Telecom Industry is going through consolidation and correction, jobs at Reliance Jio is catching the eyeballs of all those under the hammer. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd market outset has encompassed a mere 16 months of launching commercial operations, yet, have made it pretty much clear for some time now that Jio is in a hurry to capture market share. According to recent reports by Money Control, Reliance Jio plans to recruit 75,000-80,000 people during the current fiscal year.
In an event organised by the Society of Human Resources Management, Chief Human Resources Officer, Sanjay Jog affirmed reporters about the same. When asked about the recruitment scene of FY19 he said, given the attrition rate in the company, it was about 32 percent in the sales and technical areas related to constructions sites. The new jobs at Reliance Jio will allow around 75,000-80,000 recruits to join the current rolls of 1,57,000 employees. The company has a partnership with about 6,000 colleges, including technical institutions, across the country. Although 60%-70% hiring is for referrals from colleges and employees, another major contribution towards the hiring plans is that of Social media platforms.
Reliance Ready
On training for new recruits, Mr. Jog said the emphasis was on making sure that as soon as a new job at Reliance Jio is created and a person was appointed, he should be ready to start working in 24 hours. Much of the training is thus imparted online before the candidates actually join the firm. The company was working with the colleges to embed a course towards making the candidates ‘Reliance ready.’
Riding On The JIO Wave
As per Reports by Open-Signal, which specializes in crowd-sourced wireless coverage mapping all over the world, Jio’s market entry kicked off an intense price war in the telecom scene in India. Jio’s widespread 4G access, along with its at-first free and later heavily discounted data and voice plans, quickly won the hearts of more than 177 million mobile subscribers across the country.
An article featured on Dazeinfo states that the total number of broadband subscribers in India was 171.71 million as of August 2016. The subsequent release of Jio caused this number to shoot up to nearly 192.30 million by the end of September 2016, at an 11.99% growth rate. The total number of broadband subscribers has continued to grow at a tremendous pace since then, totalling at 261.31 million towards the end of February 2017.
Never a Dull Moment? Well, there are
Considering hot-off-the-fire reports, on a consolidated basis, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) reported a 39% year-on-year increase in revenue to Rs 1.29 trillion and a 17% growth in net profit to Rs 9,435 crore. Jio’s revenue growth slowed to 3.6% last quarter, much lower than the 11.9% sequential growth it had reported in the December quarter. This should worry telcos because the longer Jio takes to reach its revenue share targets, the longer the struggles of the sector may continue. The big worry is that Jio reported the capital expenditure of Rs.14,000 crore for the March quarter, far higher than the Rs.7,000 crore it had reported in the preceding two quarters.
Again, the very outset of Reliance Jio had pushed the market for consolidation. Airtel, Vodafone has been rectifying its market strategies and other players like Aircel, Tata have merged into single entities to combat incumbent biggies. It is pertinent to note here as Airtel and Vodafone have started to upgrade their existing network infrastructure to compete with the future-ready Reliance Jio network, Jio is now under pressure to meet the quality level of its incumbents.
True that Reliance Jio Info-comm Ltd triggered a fierce price war among operators as they slashed prices to rival Jio’s low-cost data plans and forced consolidation, but again Reliance Jio can look forward to positive acceleration with the efficiencies and right strategic initiatives. For the “right initiative” to do the talking, well, it’s certainly raining jobs at Reliance Jio!
