
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail Ltd is planning to embed its e-commerce app JioMart into WhatsApp within six months, allowing the 400 million Whatsapp users in India, to order products without having to leave the app, two officials aware of the development said.
The integration will allow Reliance Retail’s JioMart to pose a serious challenge to Flipkart and Amazon’s domination in India’s fast-growing online retail market. Reliance which is already India’s biggest offline retailer is trying to grab a bigger share of India’s retail market, estimated to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025.
JioMart was launched in May across 200 cities and towns, a month after Reliance Retail signed a pact with WhatsApp to boost the reach of the online shopping website. In April, Facebook Inc. bought a 9.9% stake in Reliance Industries’ digital unit Jio Platforms for $5.7 billion.
“It is essentially marrying of strengths for both companies. The JioMart integration is essentially adding a retail layer for WhatsApp chats. With payments now available on WhatsApp, it makes all the more sense. Now your chats, retail and payments will all be integrated within the same interface,” said Jayanth Kolla, founder and partner, Convergence Catalyst, a research firm.
A Reliance Retail spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking comment, Livemint quoted.
“Through our investment with Jio, we’re going to bring millions of small businesses and the customers they serve into the digital economy. This will make it easier for businesses to connect with customers and close sales,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
“Essentially, the idea is to keep users within WhatsApp, and the APIs (application programming interface) allow that. APIs for any catalogue-based service will be built in such a way that as soon as new inventory comes in, it will keep feeding two-directional data to both Jio systems and what is front-ended on WhatsApp,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and founder, Greyhound Research.
WhatsApp Business app has its own inventory management feature through which businesses can create a catalogue and showcase their products and services. The catalogue is then displayed on the business profile. WhatsApp recently added a shopping button that gives customers access to a business’s catalogue directly from their chat screen. Many merchants use third-party apps such as Bikayi and Dukaan which do not offer the same level of integration that WhatsApp is trying to build with JioMart.