Reliance Jio user base hit by demonetisation: Report

Reliance Jio user base has not be able to hold in terms of subscription. A report released by Motilal Oswal, attributes the main reason for the decline in the customer growth of Reliance Jio to the recent demonetisation exercise undertaken by the NDA government.

The decision to ban old currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination could be the main factor for the rapid slump of customers, which saw the subscriber growth slip to less than 50 per cent.

Even though there is no direct connection between demonetisation and sale of Reliance Jio SIMs, the ban had forced people to stand in queues in front of the banks to exchange old currency notes. According to the report, for the common man, it was important to keep currency in hand rather than Jio SIM card.

The Oswal report also says the company would likely to meet the 100 million subscriber target by the end of 2016 due to adverse economic conditions in India.

Hence the prospect of the Welcome offer being extended to March 2017 is now on the cards. This was because, people would be still be interested in buying Jio SIM after January, by which time, the currency issue would be resolved.

According to the report, channel partners believed that most subscribers were using Jio as a second SIM to take maximum advantage of free offerings, hence an extension in the Welcome Offer might trigger an upward swing in the subscriber base.

Further, poor service, slow connectivity and pathetic download speed were the other factors behind the waning appeal for Jio SIM (See:Reliance Jio speeds fail to match claims ).

JIO SIM users had complained of regular call drops, poor voice quality and a large section of JIO users had expressed serious concerns about speed drops during last three months of its launch.