Disruptive Business Innovation: A Case on Reliance JIO Telecom Services

Abstract

The Indian wireless telecom sector stands to be the second-largest market in the world in terms of
subscribers and data consumption after China. From being a voice-oriented to data-oriented service,
the telecom business model has seen rapid adoption by consumers and capacity expansion throughout
the Indian landscape. However, this sudden shift in the business model has been observed ever since
the inception of Reliance Jio’s disruptive digital platform. As a new entrant in an already dominated
market, Jio’s entry has ruptured the existing telecom incumbents and has resulted in market volatility
in terms of declining profit margins and a shift in consumer base. While the incumbent telecom
operators were successful to a certain extent to counter Jio, this, however, was marked by financial
and capacity instability given the scale of Jio’s disruptive offering. The industry has also witnessed
the closure and amalgamation of many telecom operators, such as Vodafone-Idea, BSNL, and MTNL.
This case study attempts to analyze the idea of disruptive innovation, impact on the consumer end,
and challenges during the current pandemic and the future of telecom services with the current
consumption and adoption levels.