With Estonian e-residentship, Mukesh Ambani eyes new ground for Jio in Europe

After disrupting India telecom market, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio is planning to enter Europe through a subsidiary in Estonia.

Ambani-led Reliance Industrial Ltd (RIL) investment firm will provide a loan of Rs 12.20 crore to the Estonian unit to kick-off operations.

In last ten years, Estonia has become one of the success stories of Europe. Ambani had also expressed interest in the e-residency programme of Estonia, which can give him an easy access to the entire European Union (EU). E-residency is a new digital nation for global citizens.

It offers the freedom to easily start and run a global business in the European Union.

The country is said to be the first to embrace e-residency, a government-issued digital ID accessible to anyone across the globe.

In a meeting with an Estonian government delegation, Ambani had expressed interest in collaborating with the country to develop better e-governance solutions for India.

About 99 per cent of Estonian public services is available on Internet round the clock. Since 2000, all government services in the Baltic state are offered online and all documents are electronically accessible.

After Jio launch in Septemeber 2016, the company has turned profitable within 17 months of its operation. Jio, which aims to cover 99 per cent of India population under its network, had also kicked off a pilot focusing on enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) services.

With about 168 million subscribers on its platform, the company has posted a net profit of Rs 504 crore compared with a loss of Rs 271 crore in the preceding quarter. The growing appetite of Ambani in Estonia seems to have driven by commercial as well as personal ambitions.

While e-residency facilitates digitised citizenship to him, it also opens up a host of business opportunities for Jio and other subsidiaries of the group in the entire European continent.

The development was reported by Mint citing sources.