From Google India to Zomato, and Netflix to Paytm to HDFC, the who’s who of the tech world lined up to congratulate a company’s five years of operations.

No surprises. All these tech companies have been a beneficiary of the data revolution that Reliance Jio brought with its dirt cheap rates when it disrupted the Indian telecom market five years ago.

Data usage in India has zoomed 1,300 per cent and the number of broadband users grew four times since September 5, 2016, when billionaire Mukesh Ambani marked re-entry into the telecom space with Jio.

While HDFC said “sar uthake jeena koi tumse seekhe” (how to live with one’s head high, is to be learnt from you), Hotstar said: “From asking ‘What’s the score?’ to watching it LIVE, cheers to #5YearsOfJio”.

Google, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, PhonePe, Apollo Hospitals, Ashok Leyland, Tinder India, Voot, Zee5, Samsung India, Vivo, Oppo, Dominos India, and SonyLiv were among the lot that took to Twitter to congratulate Jio on its fifth anniversary, PTI reported from New Delhi..

While Chinese company Mi’s  Indian subsidiary described Jio’s arrival as “5 years of fueling the Internet revolution in India”, Nokia said “kudos to your commitment on keeping India connected”.

“Tum jio karodo saal! (May you live a billion years),” said India’s biggest digital wallet firm Paytm.

E-learning platform Unacademy said, “Here’s to helping India learn and grow digitally!”

Online food ordering app Zomato, which had in its IPO prospectus mentioned the digital connect that Jio created, said, “Birthday cake is on its way!”

“It’s #5YearsOfJio kicking off the mobile Internet revolution in INdia,” Micromax said.

Jio’s entry disrupted the Indian telecom market, forcing rivals to match its dirt cheap rates.

TRAI broadband subscriber’s report shows that the number of data users has gone up four times in the last five years. The number of broadband users increased from 19.23 crore (192.3 million) in September 2016 to 79.27 crore (792.7 million) in June 2021.

This led to an exponential increase in data consumption with monthly data consumption per user witnessing over 1,303 per cent jump from 878.63 MB to a staggering 12.33 GB between December 2016 to March 2021, revealed the latest quarterly telecom performance indicator report published by TRAI.

Since the beginning of the commercial operation of Jio in September 2016, Internet data cost has gone down by over 93 per cent from around Rs 160 per GB to Rs 10.77 per GB, as per TRAI data.

Experts say that Jio broke the digital divide and helped usher in an era of true democratisation of digital technology — empowering every Indian in the process.

Before Jio ushered in the digital revolution, India had 10 unicorns; this list has now burgeoned to at least 53.

More importantly, Jio took the digital revolution to one and all. For example, the number of Facebook users in India more than doubled from 20 crore  (200 million) users in 2016 to over 42 crore (420 million) users in 2021. Similarly, the number of WhatsApp users also jumped to over 39 crore (390 million) in 2021 from 19 crore (190 million) users in 2016.

Online businesses are booming, whole new value chains are created, cutting out the middlemen, making prices affordable. On the day of the successful listing of Zomato, CEO Deepinder Goyal had applauded Reliance Jio’s ‘prolific growth’ for the opportunities it has unleashed for the new-age internet startups in the country.

The CEO of Netflix, the world’s largest online video streaming company, Reed Hastings, credited Jio with the success of streaming services in India and went on to make headlines saying, “Every country should have its own Reliance Jio.”

Jio has also revolutionised the digital economy. UPI payments have increased in value by 200,000 times and, in terms of numbers, it has gone up by 400,000 times. App downloads have also seen outstanding growth.

In 2016, there had been 6.5 billion downloads and in 2019 the numbers had soared to 19 billion.