JioMart, an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, has already rolled out services using WhatsApp across Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, according to a Credit Suisse report.

On Sunday, BusinessLine had reported JioMart starting services in these three locales.

READ THE STORY: JioMart starts home delivery in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan

The company has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders. The customer initiates the interaction on WhatsApp, checks out the grocery order on JioMart webpage, gets connected with a retail store on WhatsApp and then customer picks up the order from the Kirana and pays in cash, the brokerage report said.

“In our view, the model is likely to evolve (on delivery, completing the transaction on one app, etc.) and for the best case, JioMart needs to be visible on the app (currently customer starts the interaction),” it added.

Facebook gets the majority of revenues from advertisements but is also venturing into commerce (Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Checkout, WhatsApp Business accounts and Meesho investment).

Incrementally, the focus is to complete the commerce transaction on the Facebook platform, and therefore it is possible that at a certain stage JioMart may be available as a mini-app (similar to WeChat), it added.

The deal benefits Facebook via a partnership with the largest retail player in India, where partnership starts with grocery, and later could be extended to medicine distribution, fashion and lifestyle stores and food delivery.

The key benefit of the deal is the faster adoption of the new commerce initiative on the grocery. However, critical bottleneck currently is to get a significant number of Kirana partners on board (as delivery can then be a meagre low cost).

The deal valuation for Jio is already close to our valuation, and our target price is lower than current market price due to the assumption of a gradual recovery in the hydrocarbons business, it said.

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