Last week, the entire business world was taken by storm when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company has bought a 9.9% stake in Reliance Jio, the telecommunication division of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) for a whopping $5.7 billion. Soon, people came up with opinions about the varied pros and cons of this deal and how both the entities are going to be benefitted from this mega deal. Honestly, I was of the opinion that, in a shorter span, this gives Jio, specifically Jio Mart to expand using Facebook’s most penetrative feature WhatsApp to the most remote corner of the nation. On the other hand, Facebook has been eyeing to go ahead with their WhatsApp payment feature that has not been very popular in the country. What made me think about those lines is my observation. I have seen many small and micro businesses running across WhatsApp and that ranges from clothes, jewelry to fish. So, you can imagine how broad the spectrum is and that has been made possible due to Jio’s low-cost internet connectivity. Here, I quote, what Mr. Abhijit Bose, Head, WhatsApp India said in 2019, “What started as a P2P (peer-to-peer) service has enabled users to connect the same way in P2B (peer-to business) conversations.” This necessarily means people are finding it as a convenient end-to-end business platform. As of 2019 records, this business stands at about 1 million and the numbers have only increased from there.
Cut to today, 2020. The entire country is fighting a pandemic and is under lockdown. Jio Mart has taken this opportunity and has launched a unique order booking service on its platform through WhatsApp. They have come up with a unique JioMart WhatsApp number and orders requested are supposed to be delivered within 48 hours. Currently, this feature has been launched in selected localities of Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Kalyan as of now. Once this pilot works well, they are certainly aiming to extend this feature across the length and breadth of the nation.
Hence, as predicted the mega-deal marriage has already started to work. Jio Mart has made the first move. Facebook, here, is playing the second fiddle but if the alliance works well, it will soon try to push its payment medium among the small and micro enterprises in the country. We all know a huge potential does exist at the bottom of the pyramid segment and this alliance will be aiming to tap that in the near future. Let me tell you, it’s just the beginning. We need to monitor how and when they reap other benefits.
Meanwhile, Amazon and Grofers! Are you listening??
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