MAY 20249AUTO INDUSTRY TO INVEST RS.25,000 CRORE TO SCALE EV MANUFACTURING: ICRARELIANCE JIO NOW WORLD'S LARGEST DATA SERVICE PROVIDERThe auto component industry is poised to invest over Rs 25,000 crore in the next 3-4 years to scale up the production of electric vehicle (EV) parts, as highlighted by rating agency ICRA on Tues-day. EV penetration in FY2024 has reached 4.7 percent, primarily fueled by the electric two-wheeler segment, with contributions also coming from e-three-wheelers and electric buses, according to ICRA's statement. No-tably, traction motors, control units, and battery man-agement systems have witnessed significant localiza-tion over the years.However, advanced chemistry batteries, consti-tuting around 35-40 percent of the vehicle price and remaining the most crucial and costly component, are predominantly imported, ICRA added. The relatively low levels of localization present manufacturing op-portunities for domestic auto component suppliers."ICRA anticipates a minimum of Rs 25,000 crore in-vestment in EV components over the next three to four years, focusing on capacity expansion, technological advancements, and product enhancements," remarked ICRA Senior Vice President Shamsher Dewan. Approx-imately 45-50 percent of this investment is expected to be directed towards battery cells. Dewan further highlighted the contribution of the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, recent e-vehicle policies, and state incentives in accelerating this investment. India's number one telco, Reliance Jio, has now emerged as the world's largest mobile operator in data traffic consumption, surpassing China Mobile. The total traffic on the Jio network has reached 40.9 Exa-bytes compared with China Mobile's 38 Exabytes during the January-March quarter, according to global analytics firm Tefficient.Jio also holds the second largest 5G subscriber base globally at 108 million, with more than 28 percent of its total wireless data traffic now being consumed by 5G us-ers, the company said in its analyst presentation.To be sure, Jio's average revenue per user (ARPU) also reflects the impact of subscriber additions of JioBharat phone users, who are value customers, and the unlimited 5G promotional plans.Analysts say Jio's strong pace of user additions and consequent market share gains will augur well for reve-nue conversion in the near term, as and when tariff hikes are undertaken. They expect tariff hikes of 20-25 per-cent soon after the upcoming general elections, which end in early June.Furthermore, demand for its fixed wireless home broadband offering AirFiber has been healthy across 5,900 towns, leading to record-high quarterly home connections, Jio added. The average daily data usage for AirFiber subscribers is 13 Gigabytes, which is 30 percent higher than JioFiber subscribers. TOPSTORIES
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