Will provide tech tools for Covid vaccination drive in India: Reliance Jio chairman

NEW DELHI

As India gets ready to roll out one of the largest vaccine programmes, billionaire Mukesh Ambani on December 15 said his group is working with authorities to provide technology tools and backbone for mass inoculation against COVID-19.

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.

“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.

Three leading coronavirus vaccine developers, namely Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc and Bharat Biotech, have applied for emergency use authorisation in India.

Referring to COVID-19, Ambani said it is not in India’s DNA to be deterred by a crisis, and the nation not just faced the pandemic with enormous resilience and resolve but also converted it into an opportunity for fresh growth. (PTI)