As recently as a month ago, the future of two of India’s three remaining private telecom players—Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) and Bharti Airtel—was in doubt. Slapped with retrospective payments of Rs 53,000 crore (~$7.3 billion) and Rs 35,500 crore (~$4.8 billion), respectively, by the Supreme Court—in line with a broader definition of what constituted taxable revenues—VIL and Airtel were living on borrowed time. The only winner in all of this was Reliance Jio, which is owned by the richest man in Asia, Mukesh Ambani.
Unlike its competitors, Jio was hit with a much smaller payment.
