Jio as the largest tech co.?

Facebook is the No. 1 tech company in the world in terms of users; it crossed a whopping 2.5 billion some time back. Intel is the largest chip maker in the world. Silver Lake has invested in many tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Dell, Skype etc. KKR has invested in ByteDance (parent company of TikTok), Epic Games etc. Mubadala Investment Company owns GlobalFoundries, the world’s second largest semiconductor foundry company. If there’s one company that now unites all these companies, then it’s Jio which is in the limelight with its spree of global tie-ups, also including Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, TPG Capital, L Catterton and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

What that translates into is a solid foot in the tech world of tomorrow. The world has woken up and taken notice even as all this culminated into Reliance becoming the first Indian company with a market capitalization of US$150 billion. Said one headline: A reading guide to Reliance Jio, the most important tech company in the world! Said another: Is it going to be Ambani vs Amazon? You can also bill it: Jio vs Jeff. Hyperbole? Who knows? Maybe Jio is really headed to be one of the top global tech companies and Indian IT has come of age.

It also has to do with the quadruple play of the mobile, mobile apps, 5G and data that will dominate tomorrow. The mobile is gaining more and more compute power and doing more and more things. The mobile workforce will cross 2 billion shortly. That’s why mobile apps will become all-pervasive and try to make sure that mobiles can do whatever a desktop and laptop can do. 5G or its successor tech will not just be about mobiles but power the recently supersized Work From Home culture, smart homes, smart factories, smart cars and hence smart cities. Finally data is the new oil and the mobile has both the bandwidth and storage to consume and crunch data like never before.

Once we reach the 5G+ stage, mobile service providers will be virtually the Internet providers of the smart connected world. Then there’s online money and digital identity. Your mobile is now your wallet and I-card. Contact tracing has been introduced in the world thanks to COVID-19. In the future the Aarogya Setu app may become an essential part of all travel and pandemics.

There will be both a tech and economic boom in the post-Covid world. Jio is in pole position to make the most of that in 2021 and beyond. The lines between what companies are and what they can do are blurring, and a company which can do everything (one ring to rule them all) will thrive. So Jio as the largest tech co.? You may just be able to bet on it!