Google in Cloud Partnership With India’s Jio

Alphabet Inc owned Google is signing a cloud partnership deal with India’s telecommunication giant Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. This move will help India’s largest wireless carrier with much-needed tech solutions for its consumer offerings and enterprise offerings as it’s planning to launch 5G services in the country.

With this cloud partnership-related tie-up Jio can now utilize the expertise of a global tech giant, as Jio expands its digital services to numerous small and medium-sized businesses as well as millions of individual customers. Additionally, this cloud partnership between Google and Jio will also give Google the much-needed wings to scale Reliance’s new-age businesses, which range from e-commerce to telecoms.

According to Thomas Kurian’s interview with Reuters, “It’s a broad partnership, it involves multiple pieces of Alphabet working together.” He also added, “Our own partnership spans multiple parts of Jio not just the communications business… but also health, retail, and other things. And it allows us to bring our technology to many consumers in India on a broad-scale basis as well as to many businesses that are served by Reliance.”

Google is also working with other telecom firms on 5G, across the planet. However, the scale of Google and Jio’s cloud partnership is amongst the biggest for the silicon valley based company.

Back in 2016, Jio completely disrupted the Indian telecom market when it launched data and voice call services for free. However, it started charging its customers eventually, but only after providing free services for a year. This step forced out other players of the telecom market and soon Jio became India’s biggest carrier with 422 million customers.

Previously, in 2019 Jio signed a 10 year deal with Microsoft Corporation, in order to build data centers across the country. These will be hosted on Azure cloud with the intent of providing services to the country’s booming start-up culture.

Last year, Google invested as much as $4.5 billion in Jio Platforms, which happens to be Jio’s parent company. This move, landed Alphabet-owned Google in a rare position with Facebook, which has also invested as much as $5.7 billion in the same digital unit.