New Delhi: Months after entering the e-commerce business, the billionaire Mukesh Ambani-headed Reliance Jio has planned to take another major step and embed its retail and grocery app JioMart into WhatsApp within the next six months. With this integration, customers will need to look no beyond than the app to order products online from Reliance. Also Read – Signal is Back! Messaging App Online After Facing Technical Difficulty For Over a Day
For years, Reliance has been trying to steer away from its linchpin oil and energy businesses and enter the consumer retail business. Last year, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) raised about $26 billion in shares from investors like Google and Facebook to take on leading e-commerce platforms like Amazon.com and Walmart-backed Flipkart with its online retail arms. Also Read – Can’t Read or Listen to Your Private Conversations: WhatsApp Sets Status to Spell out Privacy Policy Updates
According to a report by Livemint, the latest move will allow India’s 400 million WhatsApp users to order products from Reliance without even leaving the popular messaging app. Also Read – Plea in SC Seeks Direction to WhatsApp to Roll Back Its Privacy Policy Update
The Facebook-owned messaging platform has already launched WhatsApp Pay to enable small businesses and individuals in the country to buy and sell things through the app.
Talking to analysts during an earnings call last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said that the Reliance Jio partnership was a huge opportunity to “get thousands of small businesses across India on-boarded onto WhatsApp, to do commerce there”.
JioMart, a hyperlocal grocery platform was launched in May to provide home delivery of groceries that includes staples, FMCG products as well as fresh produce. It also aims to capture other segments on online retail business, like fashion, electronics, smartphones, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, giving tough competition to online grocery players like BigBasket and Grofers by offering much cheaper prices and huge discounts to customers.
