In a post, Kamath recalled when Jio was getting ready to launch in 2015, he was on the Economic Times list of 10 businessmen to watch in 2016.
“Mukesh Ambani was #1, and I was #6, mainly because we had just made delivery brokerage free. We were, and still are, ants compared to Reliance/Jio,” he said.
Looking back, what’s phenomenal isn’t just how big it has become. It’s how much it has changed India and helped so many businesses start and grow, Kamath said.
“We’ve been beneficiaries too. Zerodha wouldn’t be what it is today without Aadhaar and UPI. But just as important was Jio, along with Airtel, bringing millions of Indians online with affordable data”, he noted.
“Together, all of this made the huge expansion of Indian capital markets after COVID possible. Without this digital infrastructure, many online-first businesses would be much smaller, and a lot of today’s consumer business models might not exist at all,” Kamath said.
“In 2016, India had roughly 2 crore unique investors. Today, over 13 crore Indians invest in the markets, and Jio played a big part in that,” he said.
“I can’t tell you whether to apply for the upcoming IPO. But both telcos have played a huge role in enabling an entire generation of Indian businesses like ours. And it’s nice that the capital markets they helped grow can now help Jio raise money. From the outside, it’s easy to miss how much of our success depends on infrastructure built by others,” Kamath said.
