The business partnership between Reliance Jio and Facebook can have a significant impact on small, offline businesses, in both rural and urban areas. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Ajit Mohan, vice president and managing director of Facebook India, said that the deal, which involves the introduction of JioMart grocery delivery services via WhatsApp, is focused on bringing about 60 million small businesses from physical kirana stores on to a digital platform. This will add value to small shops and businesses in both urban and rural areas, according to Mohan.
Mohan further added that through the partnership, it will become more convenient for people to discover local grocery stores. Alongside giving offline businesses a new avenue to easily digitise their trade, this will also give people a larger selection of choices from where they wish to shop.
While Mohan maintained that it is too early to talk about the financial repercussions of the Jio-Facebook partnership, he added that it will crucially enable the two companies to actively explore new areas of collaboration between the two giants. Mohan further affirmed that Jio has been a Facebook partner for "many years" now, and said that the telecom operator's model of providing affordable broadband and mobile internet services has been a major enabler of India's digital transformation.
Talking about the pace of digitisation of services in India, Mohan said, "India has seen the fastest pace of people going digital, than any other country in the world in recent times." With JioMart set to premiere on WhatsApp in the coming days, Facebook's largest investment in any Indian business looks set to make further inroads into India, which was the original goal of connecting everyone that Reliance Jio launched with.
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