Why Did Jio Extend Its Welcome Offer?

If you’re not living under a rock since the past few months, You must be aware of Reliance Jio, The new SIM provider that is shaking the industry to it’s roots and making new records every day.

Now, You may also be aware of the “Jio Welcome Offer” that was launched as an aggressive user acquisition scheme a few months back, And it was an instant hit. The welcome offer offered free Unlimited 4G to everybody in a country where less than 15% of mobile users had even 3G, It also offered unlimited Phone calls, messages etc. but it was only valid till 31st December 2016. 

Now, In a sudden twist, The company has announced that it would be extending its welcome offer until 31st March 2017. This made me wonder as to the reasons why the company would do this, And the answer was very clear.

1. SIM Shortage

One major reason why they have extended this offer is because not everybody was able to get their hands on the Jio sim due to the lack of availability throughout the country. Even though the company has made all possible efforts to reach it out to everybody , The long queues made people frustrated and consequently not taking up the SIM due to the unnecessary hassle of waiting for hours.  Furthermore, Some of the people who finally got their hands on the unicorn SIM experienced activation issues.

To reduce this mess, The company has announced that it would now be delivering Jio SIMs to homes which will be activated within 5 minutes of delivery.

2. Slowest 4G

Another prominent reason that comes to mind is that Jio wasn’t able to manage the tons of users that were suddenly using 4G and consequently their servers were over bloated and often crashed. Reliance Jio was even named the slowest 4G network in the world!

Now, The company is expanding and constructing more and more towers to be able to keep the customers happy with true 4G speed and not the Reliance 2.5G that we have come to name their 4G services.

Keeping their customers happy is not the primary reason why they’re doing this, If they had not extended their offer, these free customers would have not converted into paying customers since the service they received was close to pathetic.

3. Friend or Foe?

Almost everybody who was trying to get the Jio SIM was doing so to get unlimited 4G, Not for phone calls or messages. Yet, The 10% of people that actually wanted it to use it for phone calls and messages found it to be pretty much useless! Constant call drops and busy lines meant you couldn’t actually call using SIM. Unlimited Calls quickly converted into No calls.

Jio handled this problem by blaming it onto Airtel, Idea and all the other big rivals that it has. It claimed that they were the ones responsible for the call drops because they were intentionally blocking Jio customer’s calls to stop it from ever becoming a great rival. Vodafone, On the other hand offered to help Jio by offering a great partnership on mobile towers.

Who is the Friend and who is the Foe is yet to be seen, But this fiasco lead to them extending the offer.

4. TRAI Trouble

As if the hurdles mentioned above weren’t enough for Jio, It also got in trouble with the the Telecom Regulatory Authority Of India! With TRAI blaming Jio for trying to create a Monopoly to claiming that their Welcome Offer is illegal, There was a lot of tension between the two.

This extra time will help Reliance sort out it’s matters with TRAI.

5. Converts

Let’s address the elephant in the room, Jio is a business oriented subsidiary of Reliance Industries which at the end of the day is there to make profit. So, The obvious reason why they extended the Welcome offer was to try to lure people into converting permanently to Jio and make them pay for their service by showing that they care for them. With it already becoming the largest telecom operator in the world in just a few months, If it is successful in converting customers into paying for their services, Reliance Jio will become a wildly successful business.

Why do you think they extended their Welcome Offer? Comment down below.