RIL AGM 2021: Sundar Pichai announces a 5G partnership between Google Cloud, Jio

Reliance Industries Limited hosted its 44th Annual General Meeting (AGM) today. At the annual conference, Reliance Jio announced its first 4G-enabled smartphone called the JioPhone Next. The newly announced JioPhone Next has jointly been developed by Reliance Jio and Google and it runs on a version of Android mobile operating system that has been specially customised for the phone.

The event was also attended by Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai who talked about JioPhone Next’s features and partnership with Reliance Industries. “I'm excited that today, we can announce the next steps in this vision: Starting with a new, affordable, Jio smartphone, created with Google. Our teams have optimised a version of our Android OS, especially for this device. It will offer language and translation features, a great camera, and support for the latest Android updates,” Pichai said on the occasion.

“It is built for India… And it will open up new possibilities for millions of new users who will experience the internet for the very first time…. And we can't wait to show you the device later this year,” he added. Apart from JioPhone Next, Pichai also announced that the two companies were expanding their partnership further. Pichai said that the new ‘5G partnership between Google Cloud and Jio’ will help more than a billion Indians connect to a faster and better internet... support businesses in their digital transformation… and help Jio build new services in sectors like health, education and more — laying a foundation for the next phase of India's digitization.’

“As part of this collaboration, Reliance will also shift its core retail businesses to Google Cloud's infrastructure. They will be able take advantage of Google's AI and machine learning, ecommerce, and demand forecasting offerings. Harnessing the reliability and performance of Google Cloud will enable these businesses to scale up as needed to respond to customer demand,” he added.

As far as the details are concerned, Google Cloud will provide a complete end-to-end cloud offering for fully automated lifecycle management of Jio’s 5G network and services. Google said that the Edge Cloud infrastructure from Google Cloud will provide an open, highly scalable and high-performing platform for supporting Jio, which in turn empowers hundreds of millions of Jio subscribers that are expected to use the 5G service.

In addition to this, Jio and Google Cloud will collaborate to bring a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions to help industries address real business challenges. Reliance Jio said that Jio will explore building new services across gaming, healthcare, education, and video entertainment sectors. These services will use Jio’s 5G network, software and Google Cloud’s innovations in AI/ML, data and analytics, and other cloud-native technologies—delivered by Jio and powered by Google Cloud.

The scope of their collaboration doesn’t end there. Reliance Jio said that it will also augment its compute workload for retail business taking advantage of Google’s AI/ML, e-commerce, and demand forecasting offerings. This will help the company to rapidly grow its new commerce business to leverage Google Cloud with increased reliability and performance, as well as scale up as needed to respond to customer demand. Jio will also adopt Google Cloud’s scalable, serverless data analytics platform to advance its data-led innovation strategy.

“Cloud solutions is a key area where we are collaborating with Google. Jio will use Google Cloud’s cutting-edge technologies to power Jio’s 5G solutions and for powering the internal needs of key Reliance growth businesses like Reliance Retail, JioMart, JioSaavn and JioHealth.” RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said on the occasion.