Google, Reliance Jio to build affordable Android smartphones for India

Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani, earlier in the day at the 43rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) event announced Google would invest Rs 33,773 crore in Jio Platforms.

Besides that, the company also revealed that Reliance Jio Platforms has a signed commercial agreement with Google to launch affordable smartphones with optimisation of Android OS and Play store support in India.

"Together we are excited to rethink, from the ground up, how millions of users in India can become owners of smartphones. This effort will unlock new opportunities, further power the vibrant ecosystem of applications, and push innovation to drive growth for the new Indian economy," Sanjay Gupta, Country Head & VP, Google India, and Sameer Samat, VP, Product Management said in a joint statement.

For long, Google, as part of the Next Billion Users initiative, has been investing in resources to increase the smartphone adoption in India including the creation of a wide network of public Wi-Fi service at Indian Railways-owned stations in cities, small towns and villages across the country. It also introduced Unified Payment Interface (UPI)-based Google Pay first in India and it was an instant hit among the consumers and this project was expanded in global regions.

It can be noted that initially, Google Pay garnered 100,000 monthly transactions and later scaled to 480 million and reached 1.15 billion monthly transactions and growing within four years of its launch.

In fact, Google asked the United States government-run Federal Reserve Board to emulate UPI-based digital payment for faster cash transfer.

India is currently the second-biggest smartphone market in the world. So far, little over 500 million have access to mobile internet and now, Reliance Jio Platforms-Google collaboration is aimed to increase the reach of smartphones to wider sections of the society and reach the one-billion mark soon.

“Google has empowered millions of Indians to access helpful information and, like Jio, is a force for change and innovation. We welcome Google onboard and are excited about our partnership for what it can deliver to Indians, from universalising Internet usage to deepening the new digital economy and providing a prime mover to India’s economic growth. Together, we hope to play a strong facilitative role in the transformative journey of building a new, Digital India,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd.

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“Reliance Industries, and Jio Platforms in particular, deserve a good deal of credit for India’s digital transformation. The pace and scale of digital transformation in India is hugely inspiring for us and reinforces our view that building products for India first helps us build better products for users everywhere. Google is proud to invest ₹ 33,737 crore into Jio. I am excited that our joint collaboration will focus on increasing access for hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t currently own a smartphone while improving the mobile experience for all,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

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