Some photos of agriculture produce in bags with ‘Jio’ logo are being shared widely on social media with a claim that this is the reason why the government is not taking back the new farm laws. The post also asks people to boycott Ambani. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photos show agriculture produce being marketed in Ambani’s Jio company bags.
Fact: As on date, there is no Reliance’s Jio brand which deals with the agriculture produce. The ‘Jio’ brand of Reliance majorly deals with digital services, not agriculture produce. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check if Jio has started selling rice and wheat as shown in the pictures, no credible information was found. No such brand related to the agriculture produce was found in the list of brands on the ‘Reliance Industries Limited’ (RIL) website. It can be observed that the ‘Jio’ brand majorly deals with digital services, not agriculture produce.
Also, the ‘Jio’ brand was not found in the list of in-store retail grocery brands mentioned in the RIL’s ‘Integrated Annual Report 2019-20’. No such brand of rice, wheat or pulses were found in any of their advertisements.
On searching for the posted photos on the internet, we found a few similar rice and wheat bags with ‘Jio’ logo being shared on the internet for the last few years, much before the recent farm laws were enacted. Some of them were posted as early as April 2017.
Also, many traders on the ‘Udaan’ website (a B2B trading platform) have used these photos for their agriculture produce in sacks with ‘Jio’ logos. A seller on ‘IndiaMART’ website is also selling Polypropylene bags with the ‘Jio’ logo. While the ‘Jio’ logo belongs to RIL, it might have been used as a marketing tactic by some other private traders. FACTLY has written to RIL for their comments and this article will be updated with their response.
To sum it up, there is no Reliance’s Jio brand which deals with agriculture produce as on date.
