Days after Reliance and Facebook signed the $5.7 billion deal, Mukesh Ambani’s ambitious project JioMart has gone live on WhatsApp.
Currently in its pilot phase, the service is live only in some areas of Mumbai including Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan. The company plans to roll out the service in other parts of the country soon.
For the new initiative, Reliance has roped in several of small scale businesses and Kirana stores. Users will be allowed to place an order for essential stuff through JioMart’s WhatsApp Business account. India has about 400mn active users in India and the Mukesh Ambani-led company plans to leverage its strong Jio network and the user base for the new initiative.
In order to place an order, consumers have to text “Hi” to +91-8850008000, which prompts a link that opens a mini-store on the browser, allowing them to pick a range of grocery products including toothpaste, snacks, tea and coffee, rice, and cooking oil.
Once an order has been placed, which currently does not include a way to pay digitally, JioMart automatically assigns a neighborhood store to them and sends an invoice through WhatsApp.
JioMart, a joint venture between Reliance Retail, India’s largest retail chain, and Reliance Jio Platform, the biggest telecom network in India with over 385 million subscribers, is ensuring “hygiene and safety of staff,” “fair prices”, round-the-clock operational warehouses, and “daily supplies to the store.”
The major business deal between the two giants is expected to disrupt the Indian business ecosystem in many ways. While the JioMart initiative is a potential Amazon rival, Facebook is eyeing on the launch of WhatsApp Pay in India for quite some time now.
WhatsApp has yet to receive approval from New Delhi for a nationwide rollout of Pay in India. Media reports claimed earlier this year that WhatsApp had started to expand Pay’s reach in the country in various phases.
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