400m Indians use WhatsApp, but will they shop on it?

In India, Meta recently launched grocery shopping on its messaging service WhatsApp in collaboration with e-grocery company JioMart. This lets Indian consumers shop the entire JioMart catalog – from browsing to paying – all without leaving the messaging app.

Photo credit: Meta

It’s the first end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp, said Meta in a statement. Tech in Asia has learned that the rollout of the service is an extension to a larger deal in which Facebook agreed to pump US$5.7 billion in telecommunications firm Jio for a 9.99% stake.

Will the move be a game changer? With more than 400 million WhatsApp users, no country uses the messaging service more than India. Its e-grocery space is also expected to touch US$26 billion by FYE 2027.

JioMart and Jio are part of Reliance Industries, a powerful conglomerate headed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. But it’s far from the only competitive player in the crowded e-grocery segment.

Can the integration with Meta lead to JioMart’s breakthrough?

Dialing in the WhatsApp factor

JioMart is not the market leader in the Indian e-grocery space. One of its main competitors is BigBasket, which is owned by conglomerate Tata Group. BigBasket, which entered the e-grocery space in 2011, purchases directly from manufacturers and stores these products in its own warehouses.

But with WhatsApp’s enormous user base, JioMart might have an edge. However, Anup Jain, a partner at early-stage VC firm Orios Venture Partners, is a little skeptical. He tells Tech in Asia that the ordering experience is “much faster” on the JioMart app.

Consumers who are tech-savvy enough are already using one or the other of these e-grocery apps. So what’s the point of ordering on WhatsApp?

“I am not able to understand how JioMart being available on WhatsApp will make things better for current JioMart users,” he explains. “The big benefit to my mind is if WhatsApp starts to promote JioMart – then there is a real value.”

In other words, it depends on whether JioMart can acquire new users at a lower cost via WhatsApp. Jain notes that even if the messaging platform can convert “a fraction” of its 400 million users in India to use JioMart, it would already be “the most effective marketing campaign.”

Indeed, Rohan Agarwal, partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants, points out that this integration would be a good opportunity to tap into customers who do not shop online at all or do so infrequently. “WhatsApp is a more familiar territory for these users,” he explains. If done well, “this could boost the e-grocery and online shopping user base in the country.”

That said, before the WhatsApp integration, JioMart already had a sibling with a large user base: Reliance Jio’s telecom service has 413 million users.

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