Reliance Jio is further expanding its footprint in the digital arena with the latest launch of a new initiative called ‘Digital Udaan’. This is a digital literacy programme that will help those with internet but are not savvy enough to use the various apps and features available online. The company has roped in Facebook for this project and the scale and reach of this programme is expected to be quite large.
There are as many as 300 million internet users in the country, but a large part of this connected community, particularly living in smaller towns and villages are not familiar with the way the internet works and Jio and Facebook will use audio-visual presentations to train first time users of the internet.
The way the Digital Udaan will work has been described as a weekly episode where each Saturday, users of its services may be taught on how to use the different JioPhone features, the apps they come loaded with etc. These weekly training sessions will include the use of Facebook and can be availed in 10 different Indian languages. There will be separate train-the-trainer sessions as well.
The rollout of Digital Udaan is being carried out in phases with 13 states and 200 locations from these states being picked up for the first phase. The programme will then expand to 7000 locations across the country. This will be limited to the users of the JioPhones to start with but can include others as well.
According to the company, the broad objective of Digital Udaan is to provide inclusive information, education and entertainment and achieve 100% digital literacy in the country.
Jio Infocomm has played a key role in rapidly expanding the internet usage in India by offering data at quite cheap rates along with free voice calls thereby disrupting the staid market. The availability of internet in the remote corners of the country meant the sale of smartphones with simple LTE capability and priced as low as Rs 5,000 started flooding the market. This has facilitated companies like Facebook to push their app and expand their user base which already is one of the highest in the world. No wonder therefore that the two, Facebook and Jio have joined hands for this digital literacy initiative, ‘Digital Udaan’.