Reliance Industries Ltd. has started testing its on-line grocery shopping portal across India when India is still under a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the coronavirus.
JioMart is now delivering in more than two hundred cities, Damodar Mall who is the chief executive officer of Reliance Retail’s grocery business said in a tweet. JioMart last month started a trial project to serving users in three neighborhoods surrounding Mumbai.
The soft launch of JioMart takes Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani who is also India’s richest man, one step closer to taking on Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart in an e-commerce market that KPMG states that is likely to grow to $200 billion by 2027.
A Reliance spokesperson not much speaking on the JioMart launch.
The JioMart shopping app is available through Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp, which in India has about more than 300 million users. Facebook has said it expects the partnership with JioMart will help to make WhatsApp the medium to small businesses connect with customers.
New York-based KKR & Co. on Friday became the first private equity firm to invest in Jio Platforms Ltd.which is the digital services holding company controlled by Reliance. KKR willing to pay 113.7 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) for a 2.3% stake in Jio Platforms.
Ambani has been started selling stakes in Jio Platforms as he tries to bring Reliance’s net debt down to zero before March 2021. Reliance wants to shift away from oil and petrochemicals toward digital businesses. – Bloomberg