In 2017, the chairman of a telecom company spoke at the annual general meeting of the “creative destruction” that had taken place in the se...
In 2017, the chairman of a telecom company spoke at the annual general meeting of the “creative destruction” that had taken place in the sector over the previous few years. “[The] wireless sector from a hugely customer-friendly, choice-driven, 10-player market is slowly moving towards what is referred to in economic terms as either oligopoly, duopoly or potentially a monopoly. Is that something 1.2 billion people in India deserve? ... Is that what customers really want?”
That man was Anil Ambani, whose Reliance Communications was one of the telecom firms that has had to fold up over the past few years because of the relentless onslaught of offers from Reliance Jio, run by his brother, Mukesh Ambani, the world’s six-richest person.
Anil Ambani may have simply been admitting to sour grapes. He had not only lost the “world’s most expensive sibling rivalry”, but also towards the end, he needed a bailout from his brother to prevent being sent to jail, even as his company had declared bankruptcy.
But his comments were not without relevance.
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has rapidly become India’s biggest telecom carrier and indeed one of the world’s most sought-after companies, assisted in no small measure by a series of regulatory changes that permitted it to enter and take over...
