MUMBAI: Reliance Jio’s launch in India caused a stir in the telecommunication industry. Since then, it's been a fight between all the telecom players. When Jio launched with free call and text messages, and five times cheaper than others data, it disrupted the industry indeed.

To decode the journey of Brand Jio, its chief digital officer Vishal Sampat was in conversation with WATConsult CEO Rajiv Dingra at IAMAI 13th Marketing conclave in Mumbai. Speaking about the digital versus traditional marketing spend ratio, Sampat said, “A majority of recharges came from the digital channels and the traditional spend above telecom average.”

So, what is Brand Jio and what does it stand for? Jio stands for so much more than a telecom company, and it’s the world's largest startup. "From the business perspective, we have been building a pipe that enables billions of Indians to be online, get access to information that they did not get at the right rate," Sampat said.

"We are creating an ecosystem with our apps which not only allows consumers to come online, but experience so much more. We envision Jio as a way of life when it comes to people's digital life,” he said.

About the biggest challenge as Brand Jio moving from a service which was largely free to now paid, Sampat said: "Even after stopping being service, we still had a majority of users and we still are a hundred million plus -- with subscribers who paid us for Jio Summer Surprise and Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan. People are using our network constantly. Our data rates are the best in the industry. For paid Jio, consumers expect from us a certain level of customer experience. Despite the challenges, we successfully moved people from free to pay.”

One great thing which actually worked for the brand is King Khan, who is the brand ambassador.

“The market was dominated by three large players, and we planned to disrupt that market. From the marketing perspective, we had to be ready with various options -- one of which was choosing the perfect brand ambassador. Shah Rukh Khan's persona resonated with Jio," Sampat said.

"With our best quality service and SRK's help, we could clearly show to the world that there was an appetite for data. Then, we changed our strategy from the new launch campaign to a product-based campaign. I think product base campaign is the right way to go," Sampat said.

Jio started building the brand on two points -- one was the Net speed, and other was data. "You constantly challenged the market with these. They are challenging Jio with aggressive speed and downloads. Do you think you have to come up with a better promise," Dingra asked.

Sampat said that speed and downloads were the most talked about aspects. “The fact is that the 90 per cent mobile broadband data is carried by Jio in India. A majority of people are using our sim for data. People who claim that they are the fastest network need to cross-check with TRAI. On the regulator's website, a home-test in the last four months will reveal that Jio apps have been download faster than others. We are also the only pan-India 4G providers,” he added.