Reliance Industries has started integrating its digital commerce business JioMart with Facebook-owned instant messenger WhatsApp to develop solutions that will link merchants and consumers, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said during the company’s 44th annual general meeting on June 24.
The company plans to onboard 1 crore merchants in the next three years.
“We have launched an initial set of integrations between WhatsApp and JioMart on a trial basis and the response from WhatsApp and JioMart customers is encouraging, along with lots of valuable feedback,” Ambani said. “Our joint teams are actively developing the full New Commerce solution linking merchants and consumers and we plan to progressively launch these over the next few quarters.”
Reliance Industries introduced its omnichannel platform JioMart, which connects its offline stores to consumers via an app, in May last year. According to the company, the platform that sells fruits and vegetables, dairy and personal care products reached a peak of over 6.5 lakh orders in a single
The company said it has a loyal customer base with 80 percent of them being repeat shoppers.
“JioMart New Commerce’s aim is to transform and grow the small merchant ecosystem so our merchant partners prosper. Over the past year, over 3 lakh merchant or shopkeeper partners across 150 cities were enabled and empowered to transform their businesses both physically and digitally. Our promise to them is simple: customer apka, support hamara – We support you, so that you can serve your customers better,” Ambani said.
During the past one year, JioMart witnessed a threefold growth in kirana orders and a twofold growth in order frequency. The onboarding of merchants will trigger a socio-economic transformation on an extraordinary scale in India, Ambani said.
With the aim of boosting its e-commerce presence, Reliance has acquired companies such as lingerie player Zivame, furniture e-commerce store Urban Ladder and e-pharmacy Netmeds.
According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, Reliance’s market share in organised grocery retailing is likely to rise rapidly in 2022-23 with the expansion of JioMart. The report cited a Google analysis, which stated that JioMart has maintained a strong position in searches over other grocery e-commerce providers from April 2020 to June 2021.
Reliance also plans to shift its core retail business to Google Cloud’s infrastructure.
“They will be able to take advantage of Google’s AI and machine learning, e-commerce, and demand-forecasting offerings. Harnessing the reliability and performance of Google Cloud will enable these businesses to scale up as needed to respond to customer demand,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the AGM.
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