Reliance Jio Now Has 215 Million Users But ARPU Drops in Q1 2018

The latest results for Jio shows that more users are getting added but they are getting less money from them.

Jio reported a standalone net profit of Rs 614 crore in the quarter.

(Photo: BloombergQuint)

Reliance Jio has 215 million users on its network as of June 2018, adding over 28 million users over the past quarter. These numbers have been revealed in the latest quarterly results for the Reliance-owned telecom operator.

The Mukesh Ambani-run telco has also claimed that Jio is the fastest to cross the 200 million userbase mark in 22 months. This figure means that Jio with 215 million users is closing in on Vodafone, which recently reported it has 219 million users on its network.

Reliance Jio said its standalone net profit has increased 19.9 percent to Rs 612 crore for the three month period ended on 30 June 2018, as against the preceding quarter. The company had registered a net profit of Rs 510 crore in the January-March 2018, Reliance Jio said in a statement.

Its revenue from operations came in at Rs 8,109 crore in the June quarter, up nearly 14 percent from the fourth quarter of FY'18.

In addition to that, Jio also announced that its average revenue per user (ARPU) for the quarter came out to be Rs 134. Now, this is a drastic drop from Rs 154, which was its ARPU in the previous quarter. This has mostly to do with Jio’s affordable data plans for its customers, especially those who bought JioPhone, its 4G-powered feature phone over the past few months.

While the userbase numbers are growing at a consistent pace, Jio will have to be mindful about its degrowth in the ARPU. This is likely to find a big boost with the roll out of the Jio GigaFiber broadband service, which will open for registration from 15 August onwards.

It’ll be interesting to see what Jio plans on doing about this situation, especially when they are targeting users across both low-tier, entry-level users and also finding broadband users in a country that’s gone mobile-first in most cases lately.

(With PTI inputs.)