Jio Platforms (JPL) is pitching the indigenously developed JioBharat platform as a means to migrate millions of 2G subscribers to the fourth-generation (4G)-backed services in countries that have similar affordability-led challenges as India. <\/p>\n
It believes that the upgrade has a massive market and revenue-generation potential for digital connectivity providers. <\/p>\n
The one-time spend by nearly 729 million 2G subscribers on devices is a \u20b91.31 lakh crore (or ~$15 billion) market opportunity, according to JPL. <\/p>\n
\u201cOf the ~7.8 billion mobile customers globally, ~729 million customers continue to use 2G handsets, despite having near-universal access to 4G, and even to 5G in major countries, as of December 2025,\u201d JPL said in its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last week on Friday for its mega initial public offering (IPO). <\/p>\n
\u201c…these customers are expected to generate ~\u20b91.74 lakh crore in terms of total annual revenues for digital connectivity providers,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
ET reported, citing bankers aware of the developments, that JPL\u2019s IPO size could be a record $4 billion (\u20b937,000 crore). This would mark the first IPO from the oil-to-conglomerate in nearly 20 years, following Reliance Petroleum\u2019s in 2006. <\/p>\n
Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom market leader in India with over 520 million subscribers, comprises a bulk of JPL\u2019s operations. JPL houses Reliance Industries\u2019 (RIL) telecom and digital properties. <\/p>\n
The telecom company said that 2G users face network availability and device affordability-related constraints. This, it added, also limits their access to mobile broadband and adoption of digital services, a trend that is prevalent across parts of Africa and developing Asia. <\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst this backdrop, the JioBharat platform, which has been deployed at scale to migrate large volumes of users from 2G to 4G in India, represents a proven device-led solution that can be leveraged by digital connectivity providers in markets facing similar affordability constraints,\u201d said JPL. <\/p>\n
The JioBharat operating system (OS) and platform enable the conversion of featurephone users into digital consumers, it said, adding that the total addressable market (TAM) for smart featurephones primarily comprises one-time spend by end customers to purchase these devices. <\/p>\n
JPL said that the addressable market for Jio would be a portion of the abovementioned revenue for offering the OS and platform to enable this transition, while the hardware revenue would be retained by the hardware vendor. <\/p>\n
JPL outlined that the additional levers for driving monetisation for Jio would include licensing device reference designs, monetising embedded media and digital services platforms, and participating in other ongoing revenue streams with digital connectivity providers. <\/p>\n
Jio\u2019s ambition to replicate its JioBharat playbook coincides with its strategy to foray into international markets with global partners to deploy its deep technology stack built for 5G, fixed wireless access (FWA), and artificial intelligence (AI) services, as well as amidst a shrinking 2G feature phone base in India. <\/p>\n
JioBharat 4G phones <\/p>\n
The JioBharat 4G feature phones, which start from as low as \u20b9699, run on a low memory footprint and do not require significant hardware resources for applications such as playing videos, streaming music, and rich-format communication. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe this price-performance proposition\u2026addresses a structurally underserved market segment and is designed to convert voice-only 2G users into active data consumers,\u201d JPL said. <\/p>\n
CyberMedia Research (CMR) earlier reported that India\u2019s 2G feature phone segment fell by 12% year-on-year in the January-March quarter of 2026. The 4G segment, on the contrary, collapsed sharply by 41% annually as consumers expeditiously buy affordable smartphones. <\/p>\n
India still has over 263.5 million subscribers on 2G networks as of March 31, 2026, as per an Analysys Mason report cited by JPL. <\/p>\n
\u201cLeading players in the global smart featurephone market include Jio, Lava, Karbonn, itel, Tecno and other regional OEMs,\u201d JPL said, adding that these companies operate at varying scales and levels of localisation, driving demand for affordable and feature-rich devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jio Platforms (JPL) is pitching the indigenously developed JioBharat platform as a means to migrate millions of 2G subscribers to the fourth-generation (4G)-backed services in countries that have similar affordability-led challenges as India. It believes that the upgrade has a massive market and revenue-generation potential for digital connectivity providers. The one-time spend by nearly 729 million 2G subscribers on devices is a \u20b91.31 lakh crore (or ~$15 billion) market opportunity, according to JPL. \u201cOf the ~7.8 billion mobile customers globally, ~729 million customers continue to use 2G handsets, despite having near-universal access to 4G, and even to 5G in major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1016227,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016216\/revisions\/1016227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}