Ambani has news for the critics of disruption

NEW DELHI: New technologies and disruption create more job opportunities than they take away, and there was a need for "massive" upskilling of the work force, said Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday."However, there is a lot of apprehension to this score. And these very apprehensions could resist or delay digital transformation of our societies. That would be a mistake," Ambani said at an industry event. He added that such apprehensions of job losses could resist or delay digital transformation of the Indian society."Therefore, governments, businesses and civil society organisations should put together an ecosystem for massive upskilling of workforce. Significantly, most of the upskilling can happen on digital platforms," he added.The Mumbai-based conglomerate's telecom arm Jio that has marked its disruptive foray in September 2016, aims to offer next-generation of services such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and robotics through high-speed data networks, and is currently deploying fibre massively for service delivery. Ambani said that disrupting the old and constructing the new, was exactly the spirit of the youth of India. "Disruption is about creating a new way of life that will make the old way of life completely obsolete." he added.Jio has created greenfield fourth-generation or 4G network, and on the back of ultra-low data tariff, disrupting the sector with older operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea forced to slash their pricing. The price war has forced smaller operators to exit and even larger ones Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to merge. This has also had cascading effects on ecosystem players such as equipment manufacturers and tower companies. This market consolidation has led to massive job cuts in the telecom sector with experts believe that the impact would continue till 2020. Nearly 70,000 workforce is expected to be laid off this fiscal, according to Randstad India. The industry had shed over a lakh jobs in 2017. "Jio is determined to move India to among the top 3 in fixed-line broadband. We will now extend this fiber connectivity to homes, merchants, small and medium enterprises and large enterprises simultaneously across 1500 cities," he said.India is ranked at 134 th position in the fixed broadband penetration worldwide. India, according to him, has already taken a leadership position from being 155th in wireless broadband technology adoption."Jio, our youngest and fastest growing venture, has been conceived not as a business, but as a digital movement," Ambani said, adding that the telco was on a mission of making digital life a reality for 1.3 billion Indians.The oil-to-telecom conglomerate also has an ambitious strategy for the country's education sector, and wanted to transform country's learning centres into digitally-connected information hubs."58,000 colleges, over 700 universities and 19 lakh schools in India will be digitally connected, with Jio playing a leadership role. Any student, even in a remote village, can have access to the best teachers and the latest knowledge in the world," the Reliance Industries chief said.Ambani said that in the 1990s, India’s GDP was around $350 billion, and the country had just come out of a severe financial crisis. "Today our GDP is nearing $3 trillion, and India is well on its way to becoming one of the three richest countries in the world," he said. "Instead of a digital divide, India today is digitally united," the billionaire added. In 2014, Narendra Modi-led NDA government has launched a mega Digital India program at an initial outlay of Rs 1.13 lakh crore that aims to transform the country into a knowledge economy.Digital India envisages facilitating an array of digital services as well as delivery of citizen-centric services electronically to 1.3 billion Indians."Jio has scaled to 252 million subscribers and has become world's largest telecom network in two years, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy said, adding that the cost of per gigabyte (GB) of data has come down to 4 cents (about Rs 3) currently. Ambani's telecom company plans to cover 99% of the country with high-speed data coverage, in line with national goals.

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