India’s most disruptive telecom player is planning to expand overseas

• Reliance Jio might be expanding to Estonia.
• The company plans to procure a loan amount of $1.79 million form a Reliance Industries subsidiary investing holding company.
  
• Expanding to Estonia allows Jio to establish a global business from the EU.

One of India’s newest and biggest telecom service providers, Reliance Jio, may soon expand beyond the country’s borders, setting up a subsidiary in Estonia, a report on Livemint said.

Jio’s has by far been the most disruptive player in the Indian telecom industry in years. The company began its business by promising that it would never charge for voice calls, which was followed by extremely low data prices on Jio networks.

Entry into Estonia could allow Jio access to the entire European Union (EU). The country is one of the first to offer “e-residency”, which is a government-issued ID that anyone in the world can get. It basically lets Jio run a worldwide business, based in the EU. Reports say that Jio’s Chairman has even expressed interest in establishing a business in the country, in meetings with Estonian officials.

Industry watchers have often credited Jio for single handedly bringing down the price of data in India, to the point where other telcos are finding it difficult to keep up with the cash rich new entrant. In fact, since Jio’s entry, two of India’s leading telcos - Vodafone and Idea Cellular - have merged to form a single entity, while the country’s leading telco Airtel recently completed its acquisition of Telenor.

Currently, Reliance Jio provides GSM telephony services and integrated (wireless and wireline), convergent (voice, data and video) digital network across more than 21,000 cities and towns and over 400,000 villages.