Mukesh Ambani maybe the richest and the most powerful businessman in India. However, he is a miserable failure in the context of Telecom business. Mukesh subsequently gave control of the same to his younger brother and you know what the current fate of Reliance Communications is.
Reliance Industries, the Oil & Gas company has PAN India Wireless Broadband Access license. However, this time around I am of the opinion that Mukesh Ambani must not go solo like he has done in the past and tasted failure when it comes to consumer facing business [ Wireless & Retailing]. Reliance uses its Money Power and disrupts the space but is not agile with what the market forces demand, customer care is absent and executives are out of sync. However, the biggest problem lies with Ambani or his Wrong Advisers who want a big windfall profit to go to the family account in everything they do and end up doing lot of unnecessary businesses. Sure, you can think that way had you been so innovative and your products Kick Ass delivering unmatched user experience and QoS. But you know what the reality is.
Wireless Broadband over LTE is the only ray of hope to connect a billion Indians on the Internet at affordable price [DoT opening Copper Lines but not sure how many will they reach and when ?], you hold the Ace and my selfish motive here is to see a billion Indians wired. IMO, your goal should be to build the best possible LTE based infrastructure with partners, CAPEX intensive sure, but Infrastructure Sharing, etc is the key. On the front end, leave the billing, customer care, etc to the specialists[Outsource], and rope in device manufacturers across all platforms and make them accountable to what they sell and service at customer door step [Don’t try to build a factory to manufacture those devices in one of your SEZs]. Hire the best Engineers who will run your Application Store Platform and give the major cut to 3rd party Vendors and Developers fulfilling unmatched consumer experience. In short, build an eco-system of WoW user experience, QoS and innovation [Can Indians Really Do it ? Prove it now] where its a Win-Win for every stake holder. You really need some fresh perspective here to prove that Mukesh Ambani can change and win.
Now assuming BWA is available in India, I expect at least 400 Mn Indians to be wired to the Internet or lets call it Converged Network by 2015. What say ? Stay tuned to read what might then emerge as the most popular Platform. Any guess ?
Update: By saying major cut to 3rd party Vendors and Developers I want to explicitly say that this includes Content Developers as India will need more of regional & localized content. Also in the eco-system, Reliance might want to encourage companies like Tikona or some other MVNO who has the hunger to do it but lack resources.
Mukesh Ambani in an interview to the Economic Times on the 5th of May said,
“Right now, I believe that the better and more integrated our plan is, the more guaranteed is its success.”
I still differ from his approach of forward / backward integration that he has from the perspective of Petrochemicals business here in LTE Ecosystem.
May 12th Business Standard Reports citing Sources Close to RIL,
“RIL’s telecom venture is developing an array of applications, such as, broadband television, educational courses, and something which will offer solutions to enterprises.”
There are more than a 1000 better ideas from creative developers out there and they need a Platform, Open and encourage rather than closing and enforcing what you have is what the consumer should use.
Mukesh Ambani told Morgan Stanley on June-10th,
“I have tremendous expectations from our broadband digital services business to change the game and disruptively innovate to address India’s inherent
challenges”
“I also see big potential for broadband-enabled services to transform the government-citizen interface, besides agriculture and the informal sector of the economy, which employ the highest
number of people”
“It (broadband digital services) is something which we believe will revolutionize the consumption of such services in the country and Reliance will lead the change”