What it does: Provides broadband internet and phone services across India.
Best known for: Coming onto the scene in 2015 and snagging a significant portion of the telecom market. It has over 330 million subscribers.
Financials: Recently earned over ₹38,000 crore. This resulted in a profit before tax of over ₹4,500 crore, quadruple the previous period, despite their expenses also being much higher.
The good: Interesting projects for freshers.
The not so good: Poor work-life balance.
Hiring grads with degrees in: business and management, electrical engineering, software engineering, computer science, ICT.
Jio has been around since 2007, but it only really kicked off after being acquired by Reliance Industries. Owner Mukesh Ambani swiftly catapulted the company to success in 2016 by offering entirely free phone plans to Indians, later turning on the monetisation in 2017 to great success. At a minuscule ₹3 per gigabyte of data, the company quickly began overtaking the market and dethroning older telecom giants.
This level of accessibility was largely attributable to Ambani’s massive infrastructure investment in traditional ISP equipment, rather than the more expensive alternatives used by other telecom providers, which let him charge highly modest rates.
Today, Jio is capitalising on its market-disrupting advantage by expanding into e-commerce and cloud services. It aims to keep providing low-cost alternatives to historically expensive services across India and beyond.
Despite being in a difficult sector, Jio has seen unparalleled growth, which is excellent for freshers. They have numerous graduate programs and internships designed to acquaint you with the industry. Prominent examples include the Graduate Engineer Trainee Program and Management Trainee Program. Even if you don’t go into these programs, being at Jio will provide exposure to numerous facets of the business. It’s a prominent brand currently changing the industry, which will look good on your resume.
As with any company, there are downsides. Your schedule will be hectic, with 45 hour 6-day work weeks at a minimum. In addition, if you’re entering via the Management Trainee Program, you won’t be paid a stipend. The organisational structure can be confusing, requiring a significant amount of initiative to cope. Former employees describe it as having elements of a ‘startup’ culture, which isn’t for everyone. But working here is a great opportunity for freshers who thrive on building their own processes and adapting to a fast-changing environment.
This is ideal if you’re interested in the telecommunications business. Working at Jio will provide the means of building your skills to later go elsewhere. But if you stay too long, you could find yourself burnt out. It’s a good place to start your career if you’re single; not so much if you’ve got a family, serious hobbies or other commitments you don’t want to give up.
Most of their internships merely require an online application followed by a standard HR interview, but if you’re applying for the attractive engineering graduate program, there’s a bit more to it.
You’ll start on a series of five written tests on logic, quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning and more, followed by a psychometric test. After this, you’ll have two interview rounds: technical and HR.
Finance or business applicants can expect general questions relating to the economy, like essay questions on whether or not GST is an effective tax system, or to what extent the telecom business contributes to the Indian economy.
The following are some annual salaries to expect in different roles as a fresher:
Jio Infocomm seeks to ‘connect everyone and everything’ through rapidly developing internet and phone technologies at a modest price. It has three ‘pillars’ for achieving this end: