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With its heightened focus on JioMart, Reliance has now taken its partnership with WhatsApp a notch higher. The messaging app will now provide an end-to-end shopping experience for JioMart customers under which they can browse through JioMart’s entire grocery catalogue, add items to cart, and most importantly make the payment on WhatsApp itself.

The new feature was demonstrated by Isha Ambani, the director of Reliance Retail, during the 45th annual general meeting of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). Till now, consumers could only browse JioMart’s products through WhatsApp, but couldn’t make the payments from the messaging app.

To start shopping from JioMart through WhatsApp, consumers will have to send ‘Hi’ to the JioMart smart bot, following which they will receive a link to get started. From there, they can browse the entire JioMart catalogue, order the items and make payment.

However, besides WhatsApp Pay, consumers can also opt for ‘Cash on Delivery’ and other payment methods.

The launch of the new feature is part of a strategic partnership between Meta and Jio Platforms to accelerate India’s digital transformation and provide people and businesses of all sizes opportunities to connect in new ways, RIL said in a statement.

The partnership between RIL and WhatsApp parent Meta was announced in 2020 during the former’s 43rd AGM. Meta (former Facebook) invested $5.7 Bn (INR 43,574 Cr) in Reliance Jio and acquired 9.99% stake in the company at a pre-money valuation of $65.95 Bn (INR 4.62 Lakh Cr).

“When Jio platforms and Meta announced our partnership in 2020, Mark and I shared a vision of bringing more people and businesses online and creating truly innovative solutions that will add
convenience to the daily lives of every Indian… The JioMart on WhatsApp experience furthers our commitment of enabling a simple and convenient way of online shopping to millions of Indians,” RIL CMD Mukesh Ambani said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this is the social media giant’s first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp. “Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come,” he added.

The development comes at a time when all grocery delivery platforms – from new-age companies like Swiggy, Zomato, and Dunzo to conglomerates like Tata, which acquired BigBasket – are aggressively trying to acquire consumers.

It must be noted that Reliance Retail has over 25% stake in Dunzo.

While WhatsApp has been working for years on its payments feature in India, it got the National Payments Council of India’s (NPCI’s) nod in April 2022 to roll out the UPI feature to 100 Mn users. Since then, its payment feature has recorded 2.3 Cr UPI transactions worth INR 429.06 Cr. However, WhatsApp Pay has not been able to acquire a significant market share yet in
the payment ecosystem dominated by Paytm, Google pay, and PhonePe.