Twenty-two months old Reliance Jio revenue tops Vodafone, posts its third profitable quarter

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio has in third straight time posted a net profit for the fiscal first quarter of FY19 (i.e; April-June).

Jio standalone net profit increased 19.9 per cent to Rs 612 crore in comparison with Rs 510 crore in the January-March period, the company said in a quarterly financial release.

Jio's revenue rose to Rs 8109 surpassing that of Vodafone India which had recently posted Rs 7,860 crore in the fiscal first quarter.

The subscriber base stood at 215.3 million as on June 30, 2018.

"We doubled our customer base and most user metrics in the last 12 months. 215 million customers within 22 months of start is a record that no technology company has been able to achieve anywhere in the world," said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of RIL.

The company also claimed to have added more users through strong customer engagement. This quarter it added 28.7 million subscribers as against 26.5 million in the previous quarter.

The average data consumption per user per month of 10.6 GB and average voice consumption of 744 minutes per user per month. It also witnessed average video consumption of 15.4 hours per subscriber per month.

However, its ARPU (average revenue per user) during the quarter was Rs 134.5.

Jio, which started operations in September 2016 with a nationwide 4G network, reported an over 18 per cent sequential jump in adjusted gross revenue (including national long distance revenue) to Rs 6,300 crore the last.

In comparison, its rival and market leader Bharti Airtel posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 97.30 crore for the quarter. Airtel revenue fell 13.5% from last year to Rs 14,930 crore in the past quarter. Its ARPU was way below than Jio at Rs 105.

Vodafone India’s service revenue fell 31% in the quarter, while Idea Cellular is also expected to post a wider loss.

Meanwhile, both of telecom operators have got merger clearance from DoT, which will forge the biggest telecom entity with around 400 million subscribers and 40 per cent of industry revenues.