Reliance Jio names Sanjay Mashruwala as managing director

Reliance has appointed Sanjay Mashruwala as managing director of its 4G venture Reliance Jio.

NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries (RIL) has appointed Sanjay Mashruwala, a 30-year company veteran but hardly known in the telecom industry, as managing director of its fourth-generation (4G) mobility venture Reliance Jio, an executive with direct knowledge of the development said. An internal mail announcing Mashruwala's appointment was sent to employees last week, the executive said. 

India's most valuable private sector company has also hired Vodafone's former customer services head, Madhumati Lele, who is set to be the first woman executive in the Mukesh Ambani-promoted telco's leadership team. 

Sandip Das, currently CEO of Malaysia's Maxis Communications, is set to join at a top leadership position in Reliance Jio next month. Most members in the core team of its mobility venture, which is being spearheaded by Manoj Modi, a close aide of Ambani, were part of the group's first telecom foray more than a decade ago. 

The other key members of the team include its operational head Mathew Oomen, who held several key positions in Reliance Infocomm and Flag Telecom before becoming the chief technology officer at US-based telecom operator Sprint-Nextel. Oomen is working with Kiran Thomas, an assistant vice-president at RIL, who had earlier looked after the group's retail business. 

Also in the top team are former OnMobile CEO Arvind Rao, who has joined Reliance Jio as its innovation head, and Sumit Chowdhury, who was vice-president and partner at IBM and was poached by RIL last year as its chief information officer to oversee the technology and product platforms. 

Prior to his stint at IBM, Chowdhury had worked for Reliance Communications (RCom). With the top management in place, Reliance Jio, which recently announced a network-sharing deal with Mukesh's younger brother Anil's RCom, is expected to launch its much-awaited 4G offerings later this year. The RIL spokesperson did not reply to a detailed query from ET on its leadership team and their responsibilities at Reliance Jio. 

The launch is being tracked eagerly by competition and market watchers as the company is expected to shake up the telecom market, in the manner its lowcost voice services disrupted the market at the turn of the century. 

Mashruwala has played a key role in RIL's petrochemical business, and was also involved in building a nation-wide fibre optic network in record time a decade ago when the unified group launched mobile services. RIL has finalised a two-pronged strategy comprising wireless mobility as well as offering high-speed broadband, TV and other services to homes through fibre network, on the lines of Google's Fibre Project. 

The Google Fibre project, launched in Kansas City in July 2012, provides both internet as well as a high-speed broadband option for $70/month. Television services are available for $120 per month, along with 1 terabyte of Google Drive, 2 terabyte of DVR recorder plus a Nexus 7 tablet coupled with the provision to stream content on iPad and Android devices. While the deal with RCom provides Jio access to 1,20,000km of optic fibre, RIL has been building its own fibre network. 

It has outsourced this initiative to Himachal Futuristic Communications, from which it had acquired pan-India permits for highspeed data services in 2010. The executive quoted above said HFCL chairman Mahendra Nahata is also part of Jio's management team. Reliance Jio Infocomm is awaiting the telecom department's approval for testing voice services on its 4G frequencies. 

Earlier this week, Somshankar Sinha and Pooja Gupta, research analysts with Barclays Equity Research, in a report to their clients, had said RIL's real test would be the launch of its services while adding that the trickier challenge would be to come up with appropriate devices and delivering voice on 2300MHz spectrum. 

So far, no operator has launched voice services on the 2300MHz band, the 4G frequencies held by Jio Infocomm. At the end of 2012, Infotel had informed the government that it had indigenously developed what it termed VoLTE — voice over LTE — and said a trial would be helpful in maturing this technology platform. 

It also said the trials would involve RIL employees, consultants and technology partners using these services while adding that the company would pay interconnect charges to link its network to that of other mobile phone companies for testing purposes. 

It is learnt that the voice trials will be handled by Rancore Technologies, an RIL subsidiary headed by PK Bhatnagar. For the last 12 months, Rancore's 300-strong research team has been conducting network trials and has been coordinating with Jyotindra Thacker (brother-in-law of Manoj Modi), the group's IT and systems head. 

Thacker was also closely involved in sourcing of telecom networks, installation and operations when the unified group offered mobile services under the 'Infocomm' brand. Both Bhatnagar and Thacker are also part of the 4G leadership team.