Isha Ambani, director of Reliance Retail, announced the partnership between WhatsApp and JioMart on Monday at the 45th annual general meeting of Reliance Industries (RIL), allowing users to place orders via the messaging service.
Isha, daughter of RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, leads the retail business, and is tipped to be appointed chairman.
Additionally, Reliance Retail will enter the FMCG market. Isha stated that the goal of the company was to create and provide items that satisfied the needs of every Indian on a regular basis. Reliance Retail will be competing, among others, with majors Hindustan Unilever, Dabur, Nestle, and Marico in this foray. The company already has its own brands in staples, home, personal care, and general merchandise.
A demonstration was given on how to use WhatsApp to browse the JioMart food catalogue, add goods to the basket, make payments, and place orders. JioMart is India’s largest omni-channel capability deployment and uses a hyperlocal delivery approach to serve clients in over 260 locations.
Our grocery business, which is the biggest in India, caters to clients’ everyday requirements through a network of about 2,500 stores, as well as the e-commerce sites JioMart and Milkbasket. Isha stated, “We introduced Freshpik, a gourmet format, and 7-Eleven for customers who are always on the run.
“This is our first-ever end-to-end purchasing experience on WhatsApp — users can now buy food from JioMart right in a chat,” stated Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, in a press release.
Isha stated in her talk that Reliance Retail’s digital commerce platforms shipped approximately six lakh orders per day during FY22, an increase of 2.5 times over the previous year.
The company added roughly 1,50,000 partners a month as part of its new commerce initiative, bringing the total number of merchant partners to over 20 lakh. In the next five years, she said, it is on track to expand nationwide, working with one crore more merchants to serve more than 7,500 towns and three lakh villages.
While the company already operates in the fashion, clothes, electronics, food, and homecare categories, it also entered the retail pharmacy market last year by acquiring Netmeds. Through Netmeds Wholesale, the company started new commerce operations during the year and onboarded merchants across 1900 towns.
Reliance Retail operates a network of almost 4,000 fashion and lifestyle stores in more than 1,000 towns, as well as more than 8,700 consumer electronics outlets spread across 7,000 towns.
The company launched the JioMart Digital programme for consumer electronics during the year. The platform enables small electronics retailers to sell the complete Reliance Retail product line using an assisted selling methodology, enabling them to provide an excellent customer experience and increase their revenue.
