Few international companies have generated the kind of fundraising frenzy that Jio Platforms has over the past few months. The telecom operator, which is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, India’s most valuable company, launched its services less than four years ago in 2016. It already boasts close to 400 million subscribers.

˚FEW国际公司已经产生的那种狂热筹款的那JIO平台已经过去数个月。 这家电信运营商是印度最有价值的公司Reliance Industries的子公司，在不到四年前的2016年推出了其服务。它已经拥有近4亿用户。

In April, the company announced it had secured $5.7 billion in funding from tech giant Facebook. In the months that followed, barely a week went by without Jio adding a new investor to its roster: private equity firms like Silver Lake and KKR, sovereign wealth funds like the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and strategic investors like Intel and Qualcomm all announced they were investing in the company. And in July, Jio announced that Google was investing $4.5 billion. In a matter of just four months, Jio had raised some $20 billion from external investors. And all this in the middle of a pandemic. Jio, now valued at about $65 billion, managed to raise more money than the entire startup ecosystem of India did in 2019.

今年4月，该公司宣布已从科技巨头Facebook获得57亿美元的融资 。 在接下来的几个月中，Jio几乎没有一个星期向其名单中添加新的投资者：像Silver Lake和KKR这样的私募股权公司，像Saudi Saudi Public Investment Fund这样的主权财富基金以及像Intel和Qualcomm这样的战略投资者都宣布了他们正在投资该公司。 7月，Jio宣布Google将投资45亿美元 。 在短短四个月的时间里，Jio从外部投资者筹集了约200亿美元。 而这一切都在大流行之中。 如今，Jio的估值约为650亿美元，成功筹集了比印度整个创业生态系统2019年更多的资金。

Very few telecom companies are at the receiving end of the kind of attention Jio has received. Few can value themselves like a technology company; fewer still can get both Facebook and Google on board as investors and maintain a strategic partnership with Microsoft (which was also allegedly in talks to invest). Add to this the fact that the core business of Jio’s parent company, Reliance, is oil and gas (more than 50% of the company’s revenue from 2019 to 2020 came from its refining business). Where did Jio come from, and how did it suddenly become the darling of Silicon Valley?

很少有电信公司会像Jio那样受到关注。 很少有人能像科技公司那样珍视自己。 仍然很少有人能够将Facebook和Google兼职为投资者，并与Microsoft保持战略合作伙伴关系(据称，微软也在进行投资谈判 )。 此外，Jio的母公司Reliance的核心业务是石油和天然气(2019年至2020年该公司收入的50％以上来自其炼油业务)。 Jio来自哪里，又如何突然成为硅谷的宠儿？

从石油到移动互联网 (From oil to mobile internet)

Jio’s parent company, Reliance, was founded by Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966 as a trading business. Ambani started out trading synthetic yarns, which were in high demand due to the lack of industrial capacity in the country to produce synthetic fabric. Over the next 40 years, Reliance became an industrial powerhouse by expanding into manufacturing and began venturing into petrochemicals, petroleum refining, and oil and gas exploration. Reliance was a rare example of a company that thrived during the most restrictive period of India’s experiment with socialism. Key to its success was Reliance’s ability to forge, maintain, and use political connections. When Ambani died in 2002, without leaving a will, Reliance was already one of the most valuable companies in India.

Jio的母公司Reliance由Dhirubhai Ambani于1966年成立，是一家贸易公司。 Ambani开始从事合成纱线的贸易，由于该国缺乏生产合成纤维的工业能力，因此需求量很大。 在接下来的40年中，Reliance通过扩展到制造领域而成为工业强国，并开始涉足石化，石油精炼以及油气勘探。 在印度进行社会主义试验的最严格时期，一家公司蓬勃发展的时候，信赖是一个难得的例子。 成功的关键是Reliance建立，维持和利用政治联系的能力。 当安巴尼(Ambani)在2002年去世时，他没有留下遗嘱，信实已经是印度最有价值的公司之一。

Reliance could very easily have become one of the many family-run businesses that starts degenerating within a generation of being founded. In fact, it nearly did. Following Dhirubhai Ambani’s death, a very public cold war broke out between his two sons, Mukesh and Anil, that ended with them splitting the company into two in 2005. Mukesh got the core petrochemicals business, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL); Anil took control of the telecom arm that had been established a few years prior, along with a bunch of other entities, Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. The two signed a 10-year noncompete agreement that fell apart midway, allowing Mukesh Ambani’s RIL to reenter the telecom sector. Reliance Communications, the telecom arm of Anil Ambani’s group, remained in operation until 2019, when it shut down and filed for bankruptcy.

依靠可能会很容易地成为许多家族企业中的一员，这些家族在一代人的时间里就开始退化了。 实际上，它几乎做到了。 在Dhirubhai Ambani死后，他的两个儿子Mukesh和Anil之间爆发了一场非常公开的冷战，最终在2005年将公司拆分为两个儿子。 阿尼尔(Anil)接管了几年前成立的电信部门，以及其他实体Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group。 两人签署了一项为期10年的非竞争协议，该协议破裂了一半，使Mukesh Ambani的RIL可以重新进入电信行业。 阿尼尔·安巴尼(Anil Ambani)集团的电信部门信实通信(Reliance Communications)一直运营到2019年，该公司关闭并申请破产。

明智地押注4G (A smart bet on 4G)

Mukesh Ambani’s reentry into telecom was both audacious and a bit secretive. In 2010, the Indian government began auctioning both 3G and broadband wireless-access (BWA) spectrum, or 4G, which was used primarily for high-speed data access. The incumbent telecom players focused their energies on getting 3G spectrum as they sought to upgrade their infrastructure and services. The BWA auction was swept by an unknown company with only about $32,000 in revenues and a single internet subscriber. The day after the auction results were announced, RIL acquired the company and boldly stated that its aim was to build a broadband network that would cater to the Indian mass market.

穆克什·安巴尼(Mukesh Ambani)重返电信行业既大胆又隐秘。 2010年，印度政府开始拍卖3G和主要用于高速数据访问的4G宽带无线接入(BWA)频谱。 当前的电信运营商在寻求升级其基础设施和服务时将精力集中在获取3G频谱上。 BWA拍卖被一家收入仅为32,000美元，只有一个互联网订户的未知公司席卷。 宣布拍卖结果后的第二天，RIL收购了该公司，并大胆声明其目标是建立一个能够满足印度大众市场需求的宽带网络。

RIL entered the telecom sector with a blank slate, which could have been a handicap. The Wall Street Journal noted at the time, “By the time Mukesh Ambani builds a 4G wireless business, rivals will have had the chance to sign up millions of customers for 3G services, leaving a smaller pool of potential broadband subscribers. Also, 4G technologies are still being fine-tuned, whereas 3G networks have been up and running for years in other parts of the world. And 4G devices will likely be more costly than 3G ones initially, because there will be a smaller universe of manufacturers.” With the benefit of hindsight, we know that RIL’s bet on a 4G data network was the right one, allowing them to leapfrog the existing technology and high-cost structure of the incumbents by building out a data network that could offer voice calls at relatively low rates.

RIL进入电信行业时面无表情，这可能是一个障碍。 《 华尔街日报》 当时指出： “到了Mukesh Ambani建立4G无线业务之时，竞争对手将有机会签署数百万的3G服务客户，从而留下了更小的潜在宽带订户。 此外，4G技术仍在微调中，而3G网络在世界其他地区已经建立并运行了多年。 4G设备最初的价格可能会比3G设备昂贵，因为制造商的数量将减少。” 借助事后的见识，我们知道RIL在4G数据网络上的赌注是正确的选择，通过建立可以以相对较低的价格提供语音通话的数据网络，RIL可以超越现有公司的现有技术和高成本结构费率。

This is exactly what RIL’s new telecom service, named Jio, did when it was formally launched in 2016. Jio hit the market offering customers free voice calls and zero roaming charges. The data plans were so incredibly cheap, they undercut the incumbents by more than a third. At launch, Jio’s 4G network already covered 18,000 cities and towns and more than 200,000 villages. Within six months, the company was promising to cover 90% of India’s population. Ambani said he wanted to get to 100 million customers as soon as possible.

这正是RIL于2016年正式推出的名为Jio的新电信服务所做的。Jio投放市场，为客户提供免费语音通话和零漫游费用。 数据计划是如此的便宜，以至于它们削减了三分之一以上的现有数据。 在启动时，Jio的4G网络已覆盖18,000个城镇和200,000多个村庄。 在六个月内，该公司承诺将覆盖印度90％的人口。 安巴尼表示，他希望尽快吸引1亿客户。

Jio’s impact on India’s digital landscape in the three short years since it launched has been nothing short of revolutionary. The default network for most of the country is now 4G, and Jio carried about 70% of the country’s 4G traffic in 2019. Within four years, Jio has gained about 388 million customers. The cheap data plans that Jio offered were lapped up by Indians, and India’s digitization has galloped. Indians used an average of 12GB of data per month in 2019, up from about 90MB in 2014. The country is now the second-largest online market in the world. All of this has happened largely on the back on Jio. These statistics start painting a clearer picture of why there has been such a frenzy to invest.

自推出以来的短短三年内，Jio对印度的数字格局产生了革命性的影响。 现在，该国大部分地区的默认网络是4G，Jio于2019年承载了该国4G流量的约70％。四年之内，Jio赢得了约3.88亿客户 。 Jio提供的廉价数据计划遭到了印度人的青睐，印度的数字化飞速发展。 印度人在2019年平均每月使用12GB数据，高于2014年的90MB。该国现在是全球第二大在线市场。 所有这一切基本上都发生在Jio的背面。 这些统计数据开始更清晰地描绘出为什么会有如此疯狂的投资。

Jio里面有什么？ (What’s in it for Jio?)

For Jio, the foreign investments of the last few months came not a minute too soon. Jio was able to achieve this scale in such a short period because it invested more than $30 billion, the biggest private-sector investment in India’s history, to build a broadband network to cover the country, an investment that was financed largely through debt and cash reserves from the parent company’s oil and gas business. But as oil and gas prices cratered over the last year, the company faced increasing pressure from public markets to reduce its massive debt load. Raising money for Jio made sense since it was suddenly the most immediately monetizable part of Reliance. With the fundraising frenzy of the last few months, Reliance wiped out all the debt it had incurred to build out Jio and then some.

对于Jio来说，最近几个月的外国投资来得太快。 Jio之所以能够在如此短的时间内实现这一规模，是因为它投资了超过300亿美元，这是印度历史上最大的私营部门投资，目的是建立覆盖印度的宽带网络，这项投资主要是通过债务和现金融资的母公司的石油和天然气业务的石油储备。 但是随着石油和天然气价格在去年暴跌，该公司面临着来自公共市场的越来越大的压力，要求其减轻巨额债务负担。 为Jio筹集资金是有意义的，因为它突然成为Reliance最可立即获利的部分。 在过去几个月的筹款狂潮中，Reliance消灭了为建立Jio而产生的所有债务，然后还清了一些债务。

At Reliance’s annual shareholder meeting on July 15, Mukesh Ambani pointed to the direction Reliance is likely to move in. He was plain in stating that Jio is the vessel through which he aims to lead a transformation and diversification of Reliance’s business. The company will continue to build out its app ecosystem. JioMeet, which was launched in June to compete with Zoom and has already been downloaded 5 million times, was one of the platforms viewers could use to watch the entire shareholder meeting. The company is also planning to use its partnership with Google to develop a customized Android operating system to propel a shift of users from feature phones to smartphones and offer cheap 4G phones.

在7月15日举行的Reliance年度股东会议上，Mukesh Ambani指出了Reliance可能发展的方向。他明确地指出Jio是他旨在领导Reliance业务转型和多元化的工具。 该公司将继续建立其应用程序生态系统。 JioMeet于6月推出，旨在与Zoom竞争，并且已经被下载了500万次，是观众可以用来观看整个股东大会的平台之一。 该公司还计划与Google合作，开发定制的Android操作系统，以推动用户从功能手机转向智能手机，并提供廉价的4G手机。

Given recent geopolitical tensions between India and China, Reliance is clearly positioning itself to make the most of a nationalist zeitgeist. Any dent it can make in India’s heavy reliance on cheap Chinese phones will be a political success for the firm. At the July meeting, Ambani also talked up plans to roll out a homegrown 5G technology, explicitly tying it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent campaigns for a “self-reliant” India and emphasizing the potential to export their solution. Ambani is also seizing the geopolitical moment to position the company as an international player. Jio, since its inception, has marketed itself on the vision of an India that is more confident and important on the global stage.

鉴于印度和中国之间最近的地缘政治紧张局势，Reliance显然已将自己定位为充分利用民族主义时代精神。 它在印度严重依赖廉价中国手机方面所能做出的任何努力，对于该公司来说都是政治上的成功。 在7月的会议上，Ambani还讨论了推出本土5G技术的计划，明确将其与印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪(Narendra Modi)最近为“自力更生”的印度开展的活动联系在一起，并强调了出口解决方案的潜力。 安巴尼(Ambani)还抓住地缘政治时刻，将公司定位为国际参与者。 自成立以来，Jio一直以印度在全球舞台上更加自信和重要的愿景进行市场营销。

The recent flurry of investments have been eyebrow-raising, not just for the amount of money Reliance managed to raise but because its partnerships with key international players, who could perhaps have been competitors, raise pertinent questions of regulatory capture and how much of a role that will play in Reliance and Jio’s continued success. Every time an investment in Jio was announced over the last couple of months, reporters, especially at foreign publications, made a pointed note of Reliance’s closeness with the current government.

最近的大量投资令人investments目结舌，这不仅是因为Reliance设法筹集了多少资金，还因为它与可能是竞争对手的关键国际企业的伙伴关系引发了相关的问题 ，即规章制度的捕获和作用这将在Reliance和Jio的持续成功中发挥作用。 Every在JIO投资宣布，在过去几个月的时间，记者，尤其是在国外出版物，提出了尖锐的 音符信赖的亲密与现政府。

These allegations, of course, have dogged Reliance for decades regardless of the party in power. While the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple were hauled in front of the U.S. Congress for antitrust hearings this week, Reliance has worked hard to cultivate deep ties with the government at the state and national levels. While this doesn’t mean Reliance and the government can’t come into conflict — they have in the past — the company has very successfully cultivated the perception that it can bend rules in its favor.

当然，这些指控已经使信实(Reliance)困扰了数十年，而与执政党无关。 尽管本周将Facebook，Google，Amazon和Apple的首席执行官拖到美国国会进行反托拉斯听证会，但Reliance一直在努力与州和国家级政府建立深厚的联系。 尽管这并不意味着Reliance和政府不会发生冲突(过去曾发生过冲突)，但该公司已经非常成功地树立了可以改变规则以利于自己的观念。

Facebook和Google有什么用？ (What’s in it for Facebook and Google?)

For investors who want exposure to India’s untapped potential in the hope that it will bloom, what better investment vehicle could there be than Jio? Facebook, for example, has more active users in India than any other country, and it still has scope to grow. But Facebook has struggled to monetize its user base and clear regulatory hurdles. Its attempts to launch an internet provider called Free Basics in the country in 2014 was stymied by regulators, and it still hasn’t been able to launch payments on WhatsApp in the country, though this has been in the pipeline for years now. The social media giant’s investment in Jio was specifically couched around launching payments for small and medium-sized retailers. Reliance’s reach and core infrastructure, make it — on paper — a great partner to Facebook.

对于希望利用印度尚未开发的潜力以希望印度繁荣的投资者而言，还有什么比Jio更好的投资工具？ 例如，Facebook在印度的活跃用户比其他任何国家都多，并且仍有增长的空间。 但是，Facebook一直在努力通过其用户群货币化并清除监管障碍。 它试图在2014年在该国推出名为Free Basics的互联网提供商的尝试受到了监管机构的阻碍，尽管它已经在酝酿多年，但仍无法在该国的WhatsApp上启动付款。 这家社交媒体巨头对Jio的投资专门用于为中小型零售商发起付款。 依靠Reliance的影响力和核心基础架构，使它成为纸面上的出色合作伙伴-在纸面上。

Google, meanwhile, seems to be banking on the partnership to expand the market for Android smartphones in India while chipmakers Intel and Qualcomm, who have a smaller stake in Jio, hope to have a role to play in Jio’s 5G strategy.

与此同时，谷歌似乎正在利用这一合作伙伴关系来扩大印度Android智能手机的市场，而在Jio中占有较小股份的芯片制造商英特尔和高通则希望在Jio的5G战略中发挥作用 。

A fraying US-China relationship also help explain the kind of interest Reliance has received from American tech firms and investors. China, the largest market of internet users, is increasingly closed to U.S. tech companies. India, the second-largest market, is one that both welcomes them and still represents a potentially untapped market. Reliance has pitched itself as a surrogate for India itself.

美中关系的脆弱还有助于解释Reliance从美国科技公司和投资者那里获得的兴趣。 中国是最大的互联网用户市场 ，对美国的科技公司越来越封闭。 印度是第二大市场，既欢迎它们，又仍然是一个潜在的未开发市场。 信赖已成为印度自身的替代品。

It’s not a great sign for India that Facebook, and other international investors seem to think a partnership with Reliance is their best route to navigating India’s complex regulatory landscape. Google Pay’s phenomenal performance in India shows that it does not all have to be “Jio or bust”: India’s digital market does have room for competition. But if foreign investors treat Reliance as the regulatory gatekeeper to the market, that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and feed the company’s monopoly power. Already, nearly $20 billion of foreign capital has gone toward wiping out Reliance’s corporate debt as opposed to funding new startups in the country.

对于印度来说，Facebook和其他国际投资者似乎并不认为与Reliance建立合作伙伴关系是他们渡过印度复杂的监管环境的最佳途径，这并不是一个好兆头。 Google Pay在印度的出色表现表明，并非所有人都必须是“吉奥或萧条”：印度的数字市场确实有竞争空间。 但是，如果外国投资者将瑞莱恩斯(Reliance)视为市场的监管网守，那将成为一种自我实现的预言，并会养活该公司的垄断权。 已经有将近200亿美元的外国资金用于消除Reliance的公司债务，而不是为该国的新创业公司提供资金。

信赖的下一步 (What’s next for Reliance)

While Reliance’s strategy and execution with Jio has been nothing short of impressive, continuing to execute on it will be tougher. There are broader organizational questions about how Reliance will balance its new, younger digital arm and its more traditional oil business. Whether Jio can fully transition to building a robust software layer on top of its undoubtedly impressive infrastructure, is an open question. It’s also where Jio remains most vulnerable to competition. The company already boasts a suite of more than 20 apps that span from education and retail to music and video streaming. But none of these have, yet, become a breakout winner.

尽管Reliance与Jio的战略和执行令人印象深刻，但继续执行将变得更加艰难。 关于Reliance如何平衡其新的，更年轻的数字业务部门和更传统的石油业务，组织方面存在着更广泛的问题。 Jio是否可以完全过渡到在无疑令人印象深刻的基础架构之上构建健壮的软件层，这是一个悬而未决的问题。 这也是Jio最容易受到竞争的地方。 该公司已经拥有超过20种应用程序套件，涵盖从教育，零售到音乐和视频流的所有应用程序。 但是，这些都还没有成为突破冠军。

Reliance’s strength really is in building out hard infrastructure, something it’s begun to apply to retail. At the end of May, Reliance announced the launch of e-commerce arm JioMart in 200 cities. Taking advantage of market changes driven by the pandemic, JioMart began by selling groceries, the most in-demand category of goods. The company relied on its own network of retail stores and the multiple kirana (or mom and pop) stores it had spent the past year signing up for JioMart. JioMart already has some 250,000 daily orders, beating both Amazon and BigBasket, which was until recently the country’s largest e-grocer.

Reliance的优势确实在于建立坚硬的基础设施，这已开始应用于零售业。 5月底，Reliance宣布在200个城市开设电子商务分支机构JioMart 。 利用大流行引发的市场变化，JioMart开始销售杂货，这是需求最大的商品类别。 该公司依靠自己的零售商店网络以及过去一年来签约 JioMart的多家基拉纳 (或妈妈和流行)商店。 JioMart已经有大约250,000的每日订单， 击败了Amazon和BigBasket，后者直到最近是该国最大的电子食品杂货商。

During the July shareholder meeting, Ambani indicated that strategic and financial partners have expressed interest in investing in Reliance’s retail arm. It is already being reported that Amazon is considering acquiring a stake. Reliance’s next chapter is likely to be focused on using the infrastructure of Jio to power its ambitions in digital retail. This chapter is just beginning.

在7月份的股东会议上，Ambani表示战略和财务合作伙伴已表示有兴趣投资Reliance的零售部门。 据报道， 亚马逊正在考虑收购股份。 Reliance的下一章可能将重点放在使用Jio的基础架构来增强其在数字零售领域的雄心。 本章才刚刚开始。