WhatsApp’s 400 million subscribers in India and its soon-to-be-launched payments app, could give JioMart the lever it needs to be able to link millions of small merchants and kiranas with customers. The user-friendly and ubiquitous WhatsApp is the best tool that can help connect consumers with mom-and-pop stores and small merchants, facilitating deliveries of goods and services.
As Satish Meena, senior analyst at Forrester Research, pointed out JioMart has been facing issues with getting customers, both merchants and consumers and can do with a boost. “WhatsApp is a powerful tool and many small traders are already present on the messaging platform,” Meena said.
For Facebook-owned Whatsapp, the use of payments apps would probably be the revenue-driver as the operations of an increasing number of kiranas become digitised. WhatsApp’s business app — WhatsApp Business — facilitates communication between customers and small businesses. Small merchants are profiled on the app and the launch of the payments business would give WhatsApp Business an edge, analysts believe.
JioMart has been looking to provide kiranas with point of sales terminals and also technical support. At a later stage, analysts anticipate, JioMoney too could come into the equation as also the payments bank that Reliance Industries operates with State Bank of India.
To begin with JioMart might operate as an O2O initiative as it has been conceived. However, analysts expect this model would morph with time with Reliance Retail’s own stores also becoming part of the JioMart network.
“At some stage, these stores may stock not just food and groceries but a range of other goods including apparel,” a retail expert noted adding the stores may be used as delivery points for goods ordered online – on Whatsapp. A large customer-base at JioMart would allow Reliance Industries to cross-sell products and services. For JioMart, the deal will also ensure better product discovery by customers as they can search for products on platforms like Facebook and Instagram which is the usual norm these days, said Arvind Singhal, CMD at Technopak.
The partnership between Reliance Retail Whatsapp – inked on Wednesda -and could mean more competition for the likes of BigBasket and Grofers and others like Amazon and Flipkart looking to get a share of the food and groceries pie. However, analysts point out the success of online grocers lies in their ability to service orders efficiently and also in their range and quality of merchandise which not all local stores may be able to match.