MUMBAI: Reliance Jio has rolled out a slew of cashback offers and discount coupons for its prepaid subscribers in an aggressive move to retain and attract users, dampening hopes of an early return to pricing stability in the telecom industry.After triggering a massive price war last year, the Mukesh Ambani-owned company had in October reduced the tenure of its popular Rs 399 prepaid plan from 84 days to 70 days. This had led analysts to hope that the blood-letting in the industry was over and was one of the reasons why the shares of Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telco, rose to a ten-year-high recently.But Reliance Jio struck again on Thursday. The company unveiled cashback offers on every recharge of Rs 399, which include eight vouchers of Rs 50 each that will be credited to the ‘MyJio’ digital wallet of all Jio Prime members. These vouchers can be used to get discounts of Rs 50 each on any subsequent recharge, or data topup, bringing down the effective tariff.In addition, subscribers will get vouchers worth Rs 300 credited into Jio’s partner mobile wallets such as AmazonPay, AxisPay, FreeCharge, Mobikwik, Paytm and PhonePe.Moreover, subscribers will get vouchers of up to Rs 1,899 for shopping on ecommerce platforms and for discounts on flight tickets on specific portals. The offers are valid from November 10 to November 25. Analysts and experts say these schemes are likely to compel Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India to respond. “This is a discount and not a freebie but will again be a setback for the industry which will now try to catch up,” said an analyst at a global brokerage, who did not want to be named.Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) director general Rajan Mathews said since this was a promotional offer limited to a class of people within its customer base, it didn’t violate Trai regulations and predicted that more such plans could be expected going forward as telcos seek to retain customers.“Jio’s entry tariff plans had forced competition to match. Competition doesn’t always match, it does better. And then the new player goes one-up,” said Mathews. Shares of Bharti Airtel closed at Rs 503.90, up 1.77 per cent , while those of Idea Cellular closed at Rs 96.65 a piece, down 1.88 per cent on the BSE on Thursday.The new offers are also designed to protect Jio’s July-September monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) of . Rs 54.“The company has to maintain its ARPU, retain Prime customers and keep cash coming in. These offers will help them achieve that,” said Sanjiv Bhasin, executive VP, markets and corporate affairs, at brokerage IIFL. Prashant Singhal of EY said that the move was a good way to acquire more customers. “It also opens doors for more partnerships within the digital ecosystem, which can propel people to use data-rich services and e-payment platforms,” he added.Jio’s cashback offers comes days after incumbents Airtel and Vodafone launched their own offers for their customers. Bharti Airtel launched . Rs 499 per month ‘Infinity’ plan with unlimited free outgoing calls on national roaming and unlimited local and STD calls, bundled with 20 GB 4G/3G data, while Vodafone launched a host of data rollover options among others for its subscribers on Tuesday.Jio had nearly 138. 6 million users till September end. It posted a net loss of Rs 270.59 crore and revenue of Rs 6,147 crore for the September ended quarter.