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Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

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Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sonia Gandhi literally uses Reliance Jets for her personal sojourns. You are dreaming if you think Mukesh Ambani and Congress are antithetical, in fact funnily i would argue he is closer to the Congress dispensation than BJP.

Where did OP say anything about Congress vs Ambani? At best he hinted that Ambani is closer to Modi which is not that unexpected. Of course, no government has ever been 'unfriendly' to Ambani. They are all benefiting from one another.

Ambani is losing his wealth and person who benefited the most during this time is Adani who is going to surpass ambani in wealth.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#152
post #44

I'll take a contrarian view. This is good! All investment into India is good. (Yes even Chinese investment.) We are a poor capital starved country. We need every bit of cash we can get and that $5.7B will generate employment and create another strong telecom player. I strongly supported net neutrality in 2016 in India, but circumstances have changed. Jio needs the money, as does India. The poor cannot afford principl…

I'm partially with you - this maybe good. But saying all investment (special reference to China ones) is good, is taking it too far. It is already proven that China is new financial colonist [1] [2], infact last week India Govt passed a notice that any investment from China would be scrutinised.[3] [1] https://www.ft.com/content/186743b8-bb25-11e8-94b2-17176fbf9... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/…

It can't colonise India we've nukes.

Russia/Austrlia/Malaysia and Thailand have free trade agreement with China and they've not been colonised yet.

India is a big enough power to negotiate better deals with China.

So the fear of china is unwarranted.

Furthermore, there is a paper by Indian institute of foreign trade where the assert that imposition of trade barriers on china has reduced GMV of India.

What best you can do now is to partner with china and bring them into your market, learn tricks and techniques of manufacturing and become a global leader.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#153
post #12

And India's fight against Facebook's walled garden, the Round 1 of which, it had won so admirably in 2016, now faces a setback. With this, and the crumbling of BSNL, a good part of India's telecom infrastrucure is now controlled by foreign players. Anyone who remembers Marc Andreesen's execrable remark on colonialism should be concerned.

Jio is building most of its 5G tech without involvement of foreign players.

That seems impossible or is 5g tech that easy? They are going to source all equipment from one or another European country at the end.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#154
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t their leader an extreme nationalist? How does it get worse than that?

What is extreme nationalist ? India is a 5000 year old civilization. Does banning triple talaq and medieval Islamic laws count as nationalism ? Does bringing modern 21st century laws (including women equality and inheritance laws) to a territory given special status for merely political reasons count as nationalist ? The condescending attitude is very off putting. If you base your opinions on the international media…

>What is extreme nationalist ? India is a 5000 year old civilization.

False, India as a country only existed since British rule before there were many waring states.

>Does banning triple talaq and medieval Islamic laws count as nationalism ?

No, but imposing tariff on Chinese steel is protectionism, having Special Economic Zones when you are above $1000 GDP per capita is offering unfair subsidy and harming global trade, there are many more of these acts slowly haemorrhaging economy, automobile sector went into debt citing higher cost of inputs (steel price went up as government added duty on Chinese exports) and now that industry is raking even more debt, inflating bubble and when this bubble will pop, you'll have strong of NPAs.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#155

So Facebook paid 5.7 billion dollar to buy "influence" in India. The biggest influencer of India is Mukesh Ambani who has strong influence in Indian politics. Now it will be a matter of months and WhatsApp payments will get regulatory approval to go ahead to launch WhatsApp payments in India. That is the boss move here IMO. Jio is just a way to solve for regulatory hurdles in India.

For those who don't know - Mukesh Ambani is the 3rd richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $60B.

He lost a lot of net worth in 2020. Regardless, he wasn’t 3rd richest before either. He’s 2nd richest Asian. Also just below Mackenzie Bezos.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#156
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they mean Mukesh Ambani, who owns Jio and is the richest person in Asia, is a powerful player in Indian politics.

I believe Jack Ma is now the richest man in Asia. In fact, it’s probably really Ayatollah Khamenei :/

I somehow doubt Ayatollah Khamenei eclipsed the Saudis.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be its just me, but I think calling a democratically elected leader of the most diverse country in the world, an extremist, is more disrespectful.

Its a first world thing. They can overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran, and install a dictator, wage a war against Vietnam for more than a decade, meddle with south american nations wholesale, rub hands with despots like MBS of Suadi Arabia and then come to the oldest civilization in the world, one of the most diverse, culturally rich society that has survived 200 years of Imperialist rule, an even m…

The BJP and the RSS are literally nationalist.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, Vodafone should be calling out Jio- they’re going to die because of it. Jio has had some eye opening advantages- Jio abused the stress test period for their network and essentially launched their service for free saying “join Jio, next few months free! (Fine print, this is technically a stress test.) The way the auction for spectrum was conducted was magical- they had a front company With impressive bureauc…

> What is sad is that the previous governments had done a truly impressive job of threading the economic needle when it came to designing a telecom market with competition. I beg to differ. I do understand Jio was quite aggressive in expanding its services and TRAI should have been more vigilant. But that still doesn't prove that they were working together in order to establish a monopoly. The pre-Jio telecom market…

I’m sorry, but the facts are that india has (had) a remarkable telecom sector at inception.

The reason why I say this is because it’s VERY easy for the market structure to get flubbed and become only 2 or 3 firms which “compete”. (See america- invented the Internet, didn’t get the market right.)

India has some of the lowest, if not the lowest ARPUs in the world. The Indian telecom sector invented the 0 cost phone call (you give a missed call to a phone number, people call you back with offers)

Market structure is so important - you see it how the nascent Value added services market was destroyed by Indian telcos.

Back in the day one new area of innovation was VAS- but telcos were able to dictate the profit spread to VAS firms once they realized VAS was profitable. This killed the industry.

Telecoms tend towards rent seeking behavior (American telecoms say “this is the best service we can provide”, until google fibre turns up and magically those fibre installations get executed)

Data prices being high ignores the cost of calls and of infra issues the telcos were facing.

The spectrum auctions and the subsequent Supreme Court verdict destroyed our market - and there just isn’t the kind of market and economic acumen+Political power mix which will fix the market.

Re: Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India’s Jio

#160
post #20

From that Zuckerberg statement it feels like a payment play. FB and Jio will launch a payments system possibly using their blockchain and I will also bet they will integrate deeply with whatsapp, there by cloning wechat. Right now the only payments system in India is paytm and Jio is in a great position to disrupt that. They get to give fb a shot and get a cut of the revenue if it works.

Jio already has a payments app called JioPay.
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