Reliance Jio offers Google Gemini Pro for free to counter Airtel's Perplexity bet

India’s telecom operators are no longer just competing over 5G—they are now battling for AI supremacy to capture market share.

Three months after Airtel offered its subscribers Perplexity, Reliance Intelligence on Thursday announced its tie-up with Google to offer Jio users the latest version of Google Gemini AI Pro worth ₹35,000 free of cost for 18 months.

The Jio announcement comes as telecom operators seek to expand their market shares by offering new digital services alongside voice and data. The aim is to grab the higher tariff-paying customer to boost average revenue per user (Arpu).

Even though Jio may have more subscribers, it's trailing Airtel, which has an industry-leading Arpu of ₹250. Google also holds a 7.7% stake in Jio Platforms Ltd, the digital arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), which houses the telecom firm Reliance Jio. Jio is also looking at a public listing in the first half of 2026.

As of September, Jio had 506.4 million mobile subscribers. Of the same, 5G base was 234 million. As of June, Airtel's total mobile subscriber base stood at 362.8 million.

The AI war

The company announced that the rollout of Gemini Pro will commence with early access for 18-25-year-old users on unlimited 5G plans, and this will expand to include every Jio customer nationwide in the shortest time possible.

Jio users will be able to access the Gemini 2.5 Pro model in the Gemini app, with higher limits to generate stunning images and videos with its Nano Banana and Veo 3.1 models. Users will gain expanded access to NotebookLM for study and research, as well as 2TB of cloud storage.

In July, Bharti Airtel partnered with Perplexity to offer a 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription worth ₹17,000 free of cost to all its users. Perplexity is an AI-powered search and answer engine that offers real-time, accurate and deeply researched responses to users in a conversational language.

“Reliance Intelligence aims to make intelligence services accessible to 1.45 billion Indians. Through our collaboration with strategic and long-term partners such as Google, we aim to make India not just AI-enabled but AI-empowered, where every citizen and enterprise can harness intelligent tools to create, innovate and grow,” said Mukesh D. Ambani, chairman of RIL.

Enterprise AI solutions

Besides providing Google’s Gemini Pro free to Jio users, Reliance Intelligence is also coming on board as a strategic go-to-market partner for Google Cloud, driving the adoption of Gemini Enterprise across Indian organizations, it said in a release.

Gemini Enterprise is an AI platform for businesses that brings Google AI to every employee, for every workflow. Using this, teams can discover, create, share, and run AI agents.

"Today’s announcement will put Google’s cutting-edge AI tools in the hands of consumers, businesses, and India’s vibrant developer community. I’m excited for how this partnership will help expand access to AI across India,” said Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and its parent Alphabet Inc.

Reliance Intelligence will also develop and offer its own pre-built enterprise AI agents in Gemini Enterprise, expanding the available choice of both Google-built and third-party agents to users.

Reliance has also announced a partnership with Google Cloud to access its advanced AI hardware accelerators—Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). This will enable more organizations to train and deploy larger, more complex AI models, as well as deliver faster inferencing to help execute highly demanding projects and accelerate AI adoption across the broader India AI ecosystem, the company said.

RIL is developing a massive gigawatt-scale AI computing infrastructure project in Jamnagar, Gujarat, which could become the world's largest data-centre facility.

“We estimate that RIL will spend $12-15 billion on AI infrastructure to develop a 1GW data centre, underwriting about 25% of the capacity itself,” said analysts at Morgan Stanley in a 27 October note.

In August, Ambani launched Reliance Intelligence, the company’s AI arm, and announced expanded partnerships with shareholders Google and Meta Platforms for AI applications and services. A few days ago, it announced a new joint venture with Meta—Reliance Enterprise Intelligence—to build and scale enterprise AI solutions for customers in India and international markets.

The joint venture, in which Meta will own a 30% stake, will invest $97 million in the newly formed Enterprise Intelligence entity.

Lately, analysts have also upgraded the outlook of the telecom sector. This is because telcos’ total addressable market (TAM) is expanding via products such as fixed broadband, value-added services, along with enterprise offerings, including data centres, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and managed services, analysts at ICICI Securities said in a 24 October note.

The push for 5G is driving more premium customers, while home broadband is expanding, and new digital services for businesses—such as cloud, AI, and cybersecurity—are opening up fresh revenue streams for operators, analysts have said.