Reliance Jio Platforms’ investment in Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook Inc., was over $6 billion.
Customers of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s JioMart will now be able to purchase goods via WhatsApp through a new “tap and talk” option, as his Reliance Industries Ltd. threatens the dominance of online retail giants like Amazon and Walmart Inc.
A 90-second lesson and a catalog were sent to JioMart customers who received WhatsApp shopping invitations with a free delivery option and no minimum purchase value. Fruits, vegetables, cereal, toothpaste, and cookery basics like paneer cottage cheese and chickpea flour are among the everyday necessities on sale. It’s up to the customer how they choose to pay for their purchases: through JioMart or in cash at the time of delivery.
Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook Inc., spent approximately $6 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms only 19 months prior to this latest investment. In order to reach customers, the service uses Jio, India’s largest mobile provider, and depends on Reliance Retail, the country’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, to carry out the delivery. Meta’s largest international base is WhatsApp, with 530 million users, while Jio has about 425 million members.
An estimated $1.3 trillion in retail sales is expected to be spent on food and groceries in the United States by 2025, according to the Boston Consulting Group. A no-frills $87 smartphone that comes preloaded with the JioMart and WhatsApp applications, produced in conjunction with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, has bolstered Ambani’s group’s dominance in that market.
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Since Google invested $4.5 billion in Jio last year, the business, along with its U.S. partners and investors, has prioritized connecting and enrolling as many people as possible in its services.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office has often criticized WhatsApp for failing to appropriately monitor material. Reliance is helping Meta’s flagship messaging service repair its reputation in India.
Requests for a response from Reliance Industries and WhatsApp officials went unanswered.
Reliance’s JioMart, which opened in 200 cities in the summer of last year, has a WhatsApp grocery option as well, years after global competitors had a head start in Indian e-commerce. There’s still a lot of room for growth in the online grocery market, which is still a very small but quickly expanding area. For those who don’t want to wait in line at a grocery store to pick up their groceries, a flurry of local companies like Grofers, Google’s Dunzo, and Swiggy, the Tata conglomerate’s newly purchased Bigbasket, and newcomers such as Zepto offer savings and rapid deliveries.
When it comes to customers and merchants alike, WhatsApp is a great option. Hundreds of millions of Indians already use it on a daily basis for social, professional, and entertainment purposes, so they won’t have to learn how to use a new app to begin buying. Local neighborhood businesses like Kiranas, which are common in India, would also be interested in joining WhatsApp since most of its operators are already on the messaging service Amazon, Flipkart, and Jio competes to aid such shops with retail management technology, credit and tax filing services, and stock replenishment, while also attempting to use them for neighborhood deliveries.
