As India gets ready to roll out one of the largest vaccine programmes, billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday said his group is working with authorities to provide technology tools and backbone for mass inoculation against Covid-19.
Ambani’s telecom venture Jio was rolled out four years back, offering free voice calling and dirt-cheap data. Today, Jio is India’s largest telecom operator with over 400 million users, each connected to the internet.
At a Facebook event, Ambani said the government’s digital push kept the country running even during the pandemic and is now helping in the rollout of one of the largest vaccination programmes.
Good digital and internet access allowed people to work from home and helped businesses to run without disruption.
“Sometimes I wonder that if the pandemic had struck India just four or five years earlier, we would not have been in as good a shape as what we are today, with all the connectivity we have,” he said.
Ambani, who heads the oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd, said the credit for this must go to the Prime Minister’s Digital India vision, where he motivated the entire industry to roll out broadband in the five years of his first term.
This digital push helped transfer cash to bank accounts of 20 crore needy during the pandemic, he said.
“And now we are ready and pretty much at par with the world, to roll out one of the largest vaccine programs in the first half of 2021.”
Technology has also helped deliver health services.
“We are working very closely with all the authorities to make sure that we provide the technology tools and backbone for even vaccination in the coming quarters using technology,” he said.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too had spoken of using mobile technology for mass inoculation against COVID-19.