India's online grocery market is lucrative but competitive, with Amazon.com's Pantry jostling for market share with Walmart's Flipkart and BigBasket, backed by China's Alibaba. "In the near future JioMart ... and WhatsApp will empower nearly 30 million small Indian kirana shops to digitally transact with every customer in their neighborhood," Mukesh Ambani, Reliance's billionaire CEO said in a video statement. WhatsApp has 400 million users in India, its biggest market. A marriage of JioMart and WhatsApp services will help reach grassroots users in India who shop from small stores, he said. (The Facebook deal) allows them to cut some debt, and also establish a valuation for the Jio business," said Rusmik Oza, executive vice president at Kotak Securities.

Source: bd News24 April 22, 2020 05:48 UTC