Jio and Paytm from India join Fast Company's world ‘50 most innovative companies list’

Amid tussle between the leading telecom service providers in India, Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Jio sneaks into Fast Company's world’s 50 Most Innovative Companies for 2018.

American business magazine who released its annual report has given 17th rank to one of the cheapest cellular networks in its seventeen months of commercial launch in India.

The Fast Company's latest edition of the World's Most Innovative Companies spans more than 350 enterprises across 36 categories. iPhone maker Apple has topped the list followed by global online streaming giant Netflix and San Fransisco-based payments company Square.

Chinese Internet giant Tencent and US-based e-commerce major Amazon stands at number four and five respectively. The ranking also includes The Washington Post and Spotify who are in the top 10 list, while Instagram, SpaceX, and Walmart have managed to keep themselves in top 15 most innovative companies.

India and China contribution to Fast Company's 2018 edition

Apart from Reliance Jio, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm is the only player included as an Indian entity in the list. The Alibaba-backed payment-cum-e-commerce firm has got the 31st position in the table.

The magazine firm also released the top 10 Indian firms in Most Innovative Company's country wise list. Reliance Jio has topped the chart followed by Paytm. Mobile advertising and discovery platform InMobi who acquired Los Angeles-based startup AerServ for a whopping $90 million got 3rd place in the list.

Interestingly agritech startup EM3 AgriServices stayed ahead of Oyo Rooms, who got 10th position on the chart. However, only two of the top 10 Indian firms on the Fast Company's list made it to the top 50 table at world level.

Besides, Indian American venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Palo Alto-based VC firm Social Capital and former executive of Facebook, has also been selected and ranked 19th in the Fast Companies list. Social capital recently invested in SaaS-based startup WebEngage.

Fast Company, which holds a majority of players from the US in its list, Tencent, Bytedance-parent company of news app Toutiao, VIPKid, drone startup DJI are four players from China who made to the list of 50 companies selected by the American business magazine.

While Shenzhen-based DJI being the only drone startup in the Fast Company's 2018 edition, Beijing-headquartered VIPKid and US-based Duolingo are the two startups who got the entry from ed-tech category.

How Reliance Jio made it to the table

Since its inception, Jio, the VoLTE-only operator in the country with coverage across all 22 telecom circles in India has been on the expansion spree. After acquiring the wireless assets of Reliance Communications (RCOM) and its affiliates, the firm has been investing in all possible area.

Recently, it left behind countries leading mobile selling brand Samsung to become number one feature phone brand.

The firm is eyeing a huge opportunity in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things (IoT) and blockchain technology. The company is also planning to launch its own cryptocurrency JioCoin the future.

After giving a tough competition to the incumbents such as Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, the firm is planning to go public by the end of 2018.

Within 15 months of its launch, Reliance Jio turned profitable and posted a net profit of Rs 504 crore for the fiscal third quarter.

Jio success can be imagined with a report based on consensus Street estimates via Mint, which says that Jio took only 16 months to reach a revenue of Rs 6,879 crore for the December quarter, whereas Idea Cellular took 17 years to achieve the figure.

The development was first reported by Mint.