Can assure we won't lose money: Ambani on Jio

MUMBAI: Days after acknowledging at Reliance Industries' annual general meeting that Jio's customers had "suffered over five crore call failures to other networks because of insufficient interconnect capacity" in one week alone, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani told TOI that he expected the problem to be solved in a few weeks. "In the long run, you cannot take violation of legal licence obligations lightly," he said."It's like saying that because you are a dominant person, you violate traffic lights. You can be let off once or twice, maybe...Our view is that interconnect is an issue of a few weeks. You cannot break the law beyond that. It is there in the licence that you are supposed to provide inter connect, irrespective of traffic," Ambani said in the course of an almost two-hour long interview with this newspaper.He described Jio as the "world's largest startup" before adding wryly that no startup has ever "invested Rs 1.5 lakh crore without seeing one dollar of revenue".Asked how soon he expected Jio to start making profits, Ambani replied, "We are not looking for a killer return...But we believe it will give us adequate and robust returns... So, we are looking at a high teens return on our capital and that's pretty good at this size."Has RIL stock's performance in recent times been a matter of concern to him, we asked. "There are a handful of companies in the world which have delivered a compounded annual growth rate of 20% or more in shareholder returns. RIL has done it consistently for 39 years...We are currently at the end of the largest capital cycle in our history. In fact, the ongoing capital cycle is the first time we're having two major capex programs simultaneously (Jio as well as the refinery and petrochem). This is setting up the company for stronger returns in the next decade or two. The numbers will look much better as we enter our 40th year," he responded.Next year will not only mark the 40th anniversary of RIL's IPO, but will also see Ambani turning 60, so it'll be a significant milestone for the company .Asked if Jio's tie-up with Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications would remain at the infrastructure sharing level, he said, "I am personally happy that we have put the past behind us and our relationship on the family level is very cordial."However, he seemed to rule out any consolidation of the telecom operations of the two Ambani brothers, saying, "As far as businesses go, we are separate and, fundamentally, we will work with all players. We are doing the same with Bharti, Vodafone and Idea."