- Jio aims to make AI accessible to all 1.4 billion Indians
- Jio plans to monetize AI through internal efficiency, enterprise services, and mass-market tools for students, farmers, and small businesses
- But first, it's building its user base and will worry about revenue later
DTW IGNITE, COPENHAGEN — Jio is embarked on a bold plan to bring AI to 1.4 billion Indians, "to make AI inclusive, affordable and empowering," company executives said in a slide at a keynote presentation here Tuesday morning.
"AI for India means making the power of AI work for 1.4 billion Indians, not just the top of the pyramid," Jio CEO Kiran Thomas said.
"We are embracing AI in everything we are doing. We have a mantra and the mantra is, 'AI is our new UI and APIs are the new KPI," Jio COO Anish Sha said.
Jio is building AI on a foundation of its 4G and 5G network, fiber, data centers, power and cooling. The Reliance Jio network carried a half-exabyte of data during the recent Cricket World Cup finals, which was more traffic than any carrier has handled in history, Reliance Jio chairman Akash Ambani said in a video presentation at the conference. The company uses AI to build the network, including planning, optimizing, healing faults before they're noticed and implementing personalized service for half a billion Jio users.
The goal is to make intelligence so affordable that every farmer, student, creator and enterprise can use it.
Broadband flashback
The transition hearkens back to Jio's 2016 mission of bringing broadband connectivity to everyone at the highest quality and affordability in the world. Jio sees a similar transformation in AI, but in addition to affordability and quality, Jio also needs to offer accessibility. "We're still a nation that speaks 22 languages," Thomas said. AI4Bharat, a suite of open-source AI tools developed in India, supports all those languages, using natural voice on low-end devices.
Jio is incorporating AI into its entire real-time decision process, with the necessary guardrails and security framework, using AI for human resources, finance, IT, the network, business operations, customer care and service, Sha said.
The company is looking to monetize AI through three channels, Thomas said. "The first is of course in our own backyard," he said — using AI to make Jio more efficient and productive and unlock new customer experiences.
A second revenue opportunity is providing security services. "If you solve that problem for such a large operation like ours, I'm sure that will be valuable to other enterprises in India," Thomas said.
But the most exciting opportunity is helping solve daily problems for students, farmers, small businesses and other stakeholders in India, he said.
Jio's focus is on building adoption and engagement first and then monetizing AI later, through channels such as the freemium model, ad support or transaction mediation.
AI is as much a cultural change as it is a technological change, Sha said. The company is building cross-functional teams of data science and engineering and upskilling product managers and engineers.
Collaboration is essential to global AI success, and the TM Forum is "uniquely placed to help make that collaboration happen," Thomas said. TM Forum can coordinate standards and interoperability across telcos, partners and suppliers, providing tools to enable scalability, speed and safety and collaborating around innovation.
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