How does Jio make money if voice calls are free?

Jio sells mostly prepaid recharge plans that bundle data with free domestic calls. Prepaid connectivity made up 77.08% of Jio Platforms' consolidated revenue from operations in FY26, with home broadband, enterprise services and digital subscriptions making up the rest.

What is Jio's ARPU now?

Jio's average revenue per user was Rs 218.8 a month in July-September 2026 (Q2 FY27), up 3.5% from Rs 211.4 a year earlier, according to Jio Platforms' results.

How much profit does Jio make?

Jio Platforms reported a consolidated profit after tax of Rs 30,049 crore in FY26. In Q2 FY27 (July-September 2026) it earned Rs 8,387 crore on revenue from operations of Rs 40,475 crore.

How many customers does Jio have?

Jio had 542.4 million customers at the end of September 2026, of whom about 300 million were on 5G. It also had 30 million home broadband connections, half of them on JioAirFiber.

Is Jio Platforms listed on the stock market?

Yes. Jio Platforms listed on NSE and BSE on 28 October 2026 after a fresh issue of 27 crore shares at Rs 1,119 each, raising Rs 30,188 crore. The company called it the largest IPO in India so far.

When did Jio last raise mobile tariffs?

Jio's last broad tariff increase took effect on 3 July 2024, raising plan prices by 12% to 25%. In October 2026 management said it did not want tariff hikes to be its only lever of growth.

Who owns Jio Platforms?

Before the IPO, Reliance Industries owned 66.43% of Jio Platforms, a Meta affiliate 9.98% and Google 7.73%, according to the draft prospectus. The IPO was a fresh issue, so these stakes were diluted rather than sold.

How Reliance Jio makes money: ARPU, 5G and the IPO

The short answer: Jio makes money by selling mobile data plans to more than half a billion Indians, most of them prepaid recharges bought every month or two. In July-September 2026 it earned Rs 218.8 a month from the average customer and kept more than half of its revenue as EBITDA, the profit before depreciation, interest and tax [1][2]. The free launch of 2016 bought the customers; the profit came later, from small price rises, heavy data use and a network that is now largely paid for.

Key numbers
Revenue from operations, Q2 FY27 (Jul-Sep 2026, consolidated)	Rs 40,475 crore, up 11.4% [1][12]
Profit after tax, Q2 FY27	Rs 8,387 crore, up 13.7% [1]
EBITDA margin, Q2 FY27	54.1% [1]
Revenue and profit, FY26 (Apr 2025-Mar 2026)	Rs 1,46,885 crore revenue; Rs 30,049 crore profit [1]
Customers, 30 Sep 2026	542.4 million, of which about 300 million on 5G [1]
Monthly ARPU, Q2 FY27	Rs 218.8 (Rs 211.4 a year earlier) [1]
Data used per customer, Q2 FY27	44.2 GB a month [1]
Home broadband connections, Sep 2026	30.0 million, including 15.1 million on JioAirFiber [1]
Share of revenue from prepaid plans, FY26	77.08% [5]
Cash capex, FY26	Rs 34,184 crore, down from Rs 53,510 crore in FY24 [5]
IPO	Rs 30,188 crore fresh issue; listed 28 Oct 2026 [1]

The model in one line: sell data cheaply, to almost everyone, every month

When Reliance Jio Infocomm switched on its network on 5 September 2016, it gave away unlimited 4G data, calls and apps free until 31 December 2016 under its “Welcome Offer” [8]. It also promised that domestic voice calls would stay free even after that, and said average data prices would be around Rs 50 per GB [8].

That flipped the old telecom model. Before Jio, operators charged separately for calls, SMS and data. Jio’s own prospectus describes the change: it made “voice free and charging only for data” [5]. Rivals followed.

The prices that resulted are almost hard to believe. Jio’s draft prospectus, quoting an Analysys Mason report built on TRAI data, says the average cost to an Indian customer was Rs 228 per GB in FY2016. By October-December 2025 it was Rs 7.9 per GB [5]. That is roughly a 29-fold fall (our calculation). The same report puts the US figure at Rs 239.8 per GB [5].

So how does a company that sells data this cheaply earn Rs 8,387 crore of profit in a single quarter [1]? The answer is scale, a steady climb in what each customer pays, and costs that grow more slowly than revenue.

Where the money comes from

Jio Platforms Ltd (JPL) is the listed parent. Its main operating company is Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL), which holds the telecom licence and runs the network [2].

1. Mobile recharges: the core

Most of the money comes from prepaid mobile plans. In FY26, revenue from prepaid connectivity was 77.08% of JPL’s consolidated revenue from operations [5]. That works out to roughly Rs 1.13 lakh crore (our calculation).

The key measure is ARPU, the average revenue per user per month. Jio’s was Rs 218.8 in Q2 FY27 [1]. That is about Rs 7.20 a day per customer (our calculation). About six years earlier, in April-June 2020, it was Rs 140.3 [10]. ARPU has risen about 56% since then (our calculation).

ARPU went up in two ways. The first is tariff hikes. The last broad one took effect on 3 July 2024, when Jio raised plan prices by 12% to 25%; for example, the 28-day Rs 155 plan became Rs 189 [11]. The second is customers moving to costlier plans and using more data. Between Q2 FY26 and Q2 FY27, ARPU rose Rs 7.4 with no tariff hike, which CFO Saurabh Sancheti put down to “a better subscriber mix” [4].

Usage is the other half of the story. The average Jio customer used 44.2 GB a month in Q2 FY27, up from 38.7 GB a year earlier [1]. Total data traffic in that one quarter was 71.3 billion GB [1].

2. Home broadband: JioFiber and JioAirFiber

Jio had 30.0 million home broadband connections at the end of September 2026 [1]. Of these, 15.1 million were JioAirFiber, which delivers internet to the home by radio instead of by cable. AirFiber drove more than 75% of Jio’s fixed broadband additions in the previous 12 months [1].

This matters because a home connection is a bigger bill and a stickier customer. CEO Pankaj Pawar told analysts that about 20% of India’s roughly 330 million homes had broadband, and that Jio saw no reason why this could not reach about 46% by FY2031 [4]. That is Jio’s projection, not a certainty.

Pawar also described what Jio sells on top of the basic connection: a cloud computer (JioPC) for about Rs 400-500 a month, and cloud gaming for about Rs 300, layered over a basic plan of Rs 600-700 [4].

3. Enterprise and digital services

The third stream is businesses: leased lines, cloud, security, Internet of Things (IoT) and managed services [2]. JPL itself, on a standalone basis, earned Rs 4,881 crore in Q2 FY27 from digital offerings such as entertainment content, enterprise managed services, cloud gaming and cloud PC, up from Rs 3,941 crore a year earlier [2]. Some of this business is with its own group. The prospectus says JPL provides managed IT services to its promoter, Reliance Industries [5].

Management called enterprise “the biggest opportunity”, followed by home and mobile [4]. Jio says it is also building a model where partners pay for reaching its customers. Its free 18-month Google Gemini offer, made with Google, is an example: Jio says Google bore the cost of the service [4].

In Q2 FY27, connectivity revenue grew 11% and digital services revenue 16% year on year [1].

Where the money goes: every Rs 100 of revenue

Using JPL’s consolidated results for July-September 2026 [3], here is what happened to each Rs 100 of revenue from operations (our calculation):

Rs 21.80 went on running the network: tower rent, power and fuel, fibre charges and maintenance.
Rs 7.80 went to the government as licence fees and spectrum charges.
Rs 10.50 went on other expenses, including content charges for bundled entertainment and rent on home equipment [5].
Rs 4.20 went on employees, Rs 3.10 on selling and distribution, and Rs 1.00 on charges to connect calls to other networks.

That leaves about Rs 51.60. Add Rs 2.40 of other income, mostly interest, and EBITDA comes to about Rs 54.10, matching the company’s reported 54.1% margin [1].

Then the network’s past cost shows up. Depreciation and amortisation took Rs 18.80 and interest Rs 7.40, leaving Rs 27.80 before tax. After tax, Rs 20.70 was profit [3].

Two details stand out. First, finance costs rose 40.3% year on year, because 5G assets were capitalised in March 2026, so their interest now runs through the profit and loss account [1][2]. Second, almost all of the tax charge is deferred tax. In Q2 FY27, current tax was Rs 30 crore against deferred tax of Rs 2,842 crore [3].

The government’s share is larger than the licence line suggests. Customers paid Rs 7,010 crore of GST in the quarter, which Jio collected and passed on; its gross revenue was Rs 47,485 crore before GST was removed [3].

Why the profit is growing faster than revenue

In Q2 FY27, revenue grew 11.4% but EBITDA grew 16.6% [1]. Sancheti said almost 78% of the extra revenue flowed through to EBITDA [4].

The reason is simple. A telecom network is mostly a fixed cost. Once towers, fibre and spectrum are in place, an extra customer, or an extra GB, costs little to serve. Network operating expenses were Rs 8,813 crore in Q2 FY27, up just 3.3% from Rs 8,528 crore a year earlier, while revenue rose 11.4% (our calculation from [3]).

The same is true of the subsidiary that runs the network. RJIL’s EBITDA margin reached 58.1% in Q2 FY27 [2].

The price of building it

None of this was cheap.

Spectrum. Jio holds 26,800.8 MHz of spectrum, with an average remaining life of 16 years as of March 2026 [5]. Much of it was bought in government auctions and paid for in instalments. At 31 March 2026, JPL owed Rs 1,04,514 crore in “deferred payment liabilities”, mostly these spectrum dues (our calculation from [5]).

Capex. Jio’s cash capital expenditure was Rs 53,510 crore in FY24, Rs 44,268 crore in FY25 and Rs 34,184 crore in FY26 [5]. As a share of revenue, it fell from 48.84% to 23.27% over those two years [5]. Sancheti told analysts that “the peak capex is behind us” and that he did not expect capex over the next four or five years to exceed last year’s level [4].

That is why cash generation has jumped. EBITDA minus cash capex, Jio’s own measure of surplus cash, was Rs 1,449 crore in FY24 and Rs 42,071 crore in FY26 [5]. In April-September 2026 alone it was Rs 32,130 crore, up 98% [1].

Outside money. In 2020, Jio Platforms raised Rs 1,52,056 crore from 13 investors, including Facebook, Google, Silver Lake, KKR and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund [10]. Facebook alone put in Rs 43,573.62 crore for 9.99% [9]. Reliance said those sales, with a rights issue, made it net debt free in June 2020 [9].

The October 2026 IPO

Jio Platforms listed on NSE and BSE on 28 October 2026 [1]. It issued 27 crore new shares at Rs 1,119 each. After a Rs 54 discount for employees, the gross proceeds were Rs 30,188 crore, which the company called the largest IPO in India so far [1].

Because it was a fresh issue, the money went to the company, not to existing shareholders. Rs 27,500 crore was used to prepay foreign-currency loans taken by RJIL [1]. Reliance Industries put subscription at more than 22 times [7]. Akash Ambani, Jio Platforms’ managing director, told analysts demand was about Rs 7.4 lakh crore against an issue of about Rs 30,000 crore [4].

Before the IPO, Reliance Industries owned 66.43% of Jio Platforms, a Meta affiliate 9.98% and Google 7.73% [5]. Jio is now Reliance’s second-biggest earner: its digital services segment produced Rs 22,223 crore of EBITDA in Q2 FY27, out of a group total of Rs 62,409 crore [7]. That is about 36% (our calculation).

For the founder’s own story, see our profile of Mukesh Ambani.

The Reliance Retail link

One relationship is easy to miss. Reliance Retail, another Reliance group company, is the sole distributor of Jio’s prepaid connectivity [5]. Jio sells recharge vouchers to Reliance Retail, which sells them on through shops, distributors and online channels. Reliance Retail also handles customer acquisition, KYC checks and payment collection for Jio [5].

The prospectus lists this arrangement among its risk factors, while noting that alternatives exist [5]. Prepaid plans sold through this channel make up most of Jio’s revenue [5].

The market Jio sits in

At the end of September 2026, TRAI counted 541.17 million Jio broadband subscribers, out of a national total of 1,107.68 million [6]. That is about 49% of India’s broadband connections (our calculation). Bharti Airtel was second with 388.86 million [6]. In wired home broadband, Jio led with 14.92 million connections [6].

India had 1,367.93 million telephone subscribers that month [6]. Jio says about 340 million more people could move to 4G or 5G in the next five years, most of them now on 2G with other operators [4]. That is its estimate of headroom.

What could change the picture

Tariffs. Asked when the next hike would come, Akash Ambani said it was “almost two-and-a-half years since we last did it” but that Jio did not want price increases to be “the only lever of growth” [4]. Strategy chief Anshuman Thakur said a decision would come “at the right time” [4].
Satellite internet. Analysts asked about competition from satellite broadband. Group President Mathew Oommen argued that a satellite beam covers far more area than a mobile tower and so carries much less capacity per square kilometre, while saying Jio did not “underestimate any competition” [4].
Going abroad. Jio says it wants to license its home-broadband radio technology and its software stack to 10-15 large overseas partners, as a managed-services provider rather than by building networks itself [4]. No such deal had been announced by 30 October 2026.
Debt and dividends. Net debt was Rs 8,822 crore at 30 September 2026, before the IPO money arrived [2]. On dividends, Akash Ambani said the company first wanted to see its first year as a listed company [4].

The world beyond telecom is also part of the bet. Jio lists JioHotstar among the entertainment services it offers consumers [12], the same platform that streams cricket covered in our explainer on how IPL makes money.

Lessons for founders

1. Free is a strategy only if you can fund the gap. Jio gave away its service for almost four months in 2016 [8], then spent tens of thousands of crore a year on capex, reaching Rs 53,510 crore in FY24 [5]. Cash surplus after capex was close to zero in FY24 (Rs 1,449 crore) [5]. The giveaway worked because Reliance, and later Rs 1,52,056 crore of outside capital [10], could carry it for years. Most founders cannot. Price low only if your balance sheet can wait for the payback.

2. Simplify the bill. Jio did not just cut prices; it changed what customers paid for. Free calls and one data price were easier to understand than the old menu of voice, SMS and data packs [5]. A simpler price can win customers on its own.

3. Fixed costs reward scale, so grow first, then raise prices slowly. Once the network was built, 78% of each extra rupee of revenue became EBITDA [4]. Jio pushed ARPU up from Rs 140.3 to Rs 218.8 over about six years [10][1], mostly in steps rather than shocks. Like DMart, which earns a thin margin on huge volume, Jio’s model only works at a scale few businesses reach.

4. Owning distribution helps, but it is also a dependency. Reliance Retail’s shops and collection network gave Jio reach from day one, but the prospectus flags reliance on a single related-party distributor as a risk [5]. Founders who lean on a partner’s channel should know what happens if that partner changes terms.

An explainer for general reading, based on public records as of 12 November 2026. Not investment, tax or legal advice.