Facebook takes $5.7 billion stake in Indian internet giant Jio

guest · Apr 23, 2020

Facebook takes $5.7 billion stake in Indian internet giant Jio
Is WhatsApp the next WeChat-style ‘super-app?’
April 21, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21230643/facebook-reliance-jio-investment-stake-whatsapp

Facebook has made a huge bet on India by investing $5.7 billion into Jio Platforms, the tech subsidiary of multinational conglomerate Reliance Industries. Jio variously operates broadband, mobile services, and online commerce platforms, and Facebook’s investment gives it around a 10 percent stake in the company, making it the largest minority shareholder.

Facebook’s primary footprint in India currently comes from its huge WhatsApp userbase; more than 400 million Indians use the messaging app, far more than any other country in the world.

In a blog post bylined by chief revenue officer David Fischer and VP for India Ajit Mohan, the company says one of the goals of its investment is to tap into opportunities for small businesses, noting that “WhatsApp is so ingrained in Indian life that it has become a commonly used verb across many Indian languages and dialects.”
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“One focus of our collaboration with Jio will be creating new ways for people and businesses to operate more effectively in the growing digital economy,” Fischer and Mohan write.
Last week India’s Economic Times reported that Facebook and Reliance were planning to leverage WhatsApp and Jio services to create a WeChat-style “super-app” for India.

WhatsApp’s reach in India is almost matched by Jio, which proved hugely disruptive in the market by offering heavily discounted 4G plans well before competitors. The company has “brought more than 388 million people online,” according to Facebook’s blog post.
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Facebook: Facebook Invests $5.7 billion in India’s Jio Platforms

A New Collaboration to Accelerate India’s Digital Transformation
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guest · Apr 23, 2020

Facebook has a big new plan to make money in India
How a strategic partnership with Jio could finally turn WhatsApp into a moneymaker
April 23, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/interface/...estment-reliance-mukesh-ambani-india-whatsapp

Late on Tuesday, the company announced that it had invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms Limited, making it the company’s largest minority shareholder.
If you live outside of India and are not particularly interested in who owns which piece of what mobile carrier, I understand why you may find your eyes beginning to glaze over here.

One, India is one of the world’s biggest markets, and the extent to which Facebook succeeds there could determine much of its medium-term future. Two, Facebook’s history in India is complicated, as an effort to provide free Facebook access drew criticism from net neutrality activists and led to complaints of digital colonialism.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, the world is in chaos.
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Jio gets a lot money to lengthen its runway. And Facebook gets a powerful political ally in the well connected Ambani, plus some new options related to commerce. Much of the speculation focuses on how Facebook might use WhatsApp, which has 400 million users in India but doesn’t yet generate much revenue. Here’s Newley Purnell’s take in the Wall Street Journal:

Access to the platform could be a boon for Jio as it pushes forward with an ambitious plan to dominate e-commerce in the rural regions where most Indians live and it is trying to partner with millions of India’s small mom-and-pop grocery stores.
“E-commerce will happen in a very localized way” in rural India, said Tarun Pathak, an analyst with research firm Counterpoint. It will happen not on PCs but on inexpensive smartphones and, “The familiarity is there for WhatsApp,” he said. “It makes sense.”
In Bloomberg, Andy Mukherjee and Tim Culpan speculate that a close partnership between a carrier and WhatsApp could turn the messenger into a WeChat-style “superapp” — long a dream of Facebook’s, and one that has so far gone unrealized. They write: [...]
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Rasheed187 · Apr 26, 2020

Interesting stuff, so they basically want to make people pay with WhatsApp.

guest · Apr 27, 2020

Reliance and Facebook pilot JioMart grocery shopping on WhatsApp
April 27, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/26/reliance-and-facebook-pilot-jiomart-orders-on-whatsapp/

JioMart, an e-commerce venture run by India’s most valued firm, is testing an “ordering system” on WhatsApp, teasing the first peek at the collaboration between Facebook and Indian telecom giant Reliance Jio Platforms.

They can initiate an order by texting “Hi” to [...] Once an order has been placed, which currently does not include a way to pay digitally, JioMart automatically assigns a neighborhood store to them and sends an invoice through WhatsApp.
More than 1,200 neighborhood stores are engaging in the pilot program. A Jio spokesperson declined to comment.

The testing gives us an early peek at how Reliance Jio Platforms wants to leverage WhatsApp’s unparalleled reach in India, where the Facebook -owned service has amassed over 400 million users.
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Ajit Mohan, a Facebook VP who oversees the company’s business in India, told TechCrunch in an interview that the two companies will explore ways to collaborate.
One of those collaborations may allow users to find local stores around them on WhatsApp, talk to store operators and place orders from within the Facebook-owned instant messaging service, he said last week.
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guest · May 17, 2020

Facebook and ByteDance investor General Atlantic pumps $870 million into Reliance Jio
May 17, 2020
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/202...atlantic-pumps-870-million-into-reliance-jio/

India’s Reliance Jio has scored its fourth investment in four weeks. US-based firm General Atlantic has invested ₹6,598.38 cores ($870 million) in Jio Platforms in exchange for a 1.34% stake.

In the past month, Facebook, Silver Lake, and Vista group have invested more than $8 billion in Jio, picking up 9.9%, 1%, and 2.32% stakes. The new investment values Jio Platforms at $65 billion.
Bill Ford, CEO of General Atlantic, said the firm shares Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani‘s conviction that digital connectivity has the potential to significantly accelerate the Indian economy [...]
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Jio Platforms consists of the company’s carrier services with more than 388 million subscribers in India, and JioFiber, its broadband solution. Plus, it offers a bunch of other services including the music streaming app JioSaavn, entertainment apps JioCinema and JioTV, ecommerce site JioMart, which recently partnered with WhatsApp to connect grocery shops to consumers in their area.
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guest · Jun 4, 2020

Amid pandemic, investors bet on India's Jio and its giant-killer playbook
June 4, 2020
https://in.reuters.com/article/indi...o-and-its-giant-killer-playbook-idINKBN23B1E0

From its Silicon Valley-like campus near Mumbai, Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio telecom carrier is emerging as a winner from changes in the way Indian consumers plug into a digital economy made more urgent by the coronavirus pandemic.

For Indian shoppers who prefer to order online, it is launching a grocery ordering service with Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) popular WhatsApp messaging. For Bollywood fans who would prefer to avoid a crowded theater, it is readying same-day-release on the Jio platform.
The investments, including $5.7 billion from Facebook and money from private equity firms Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic and KKR & Co Inc (KKR.N), value Jio Platforms, where Reliance last year announced it was consolidating its digital offerings, at roughly $65 billion (51.6 billion pounds).
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In partnership with Facebook’s WhatsApp, Reliance has launched a new service that allows consumers to order from their local grocery stores at a time when many Indian consumers, like shoppers elsewhere, are trying to minimize trips to stores. The service was rolled out in April in three areas of Greater Mumbai.

“With the Facebook partnership, they will build the WeChat of India,” he added, referring to Tencent Holdings’ (0700.HK) messaging, payments and social media app that is ubiquitous in China.
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guest · Jun 17, 2020

Reliance Jio’s Facebook deal under CCI scanner
June 17, 2020
https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tec...ok-deal-under-cci-scanner-71592399001369.html

India’s antitrust watchdog is reviewing Facebook Inc’s purchase of a 10% stake in Reliance Industries Ltd’s digital assets, a deal that would give the US giant another foothold in one of the world’s fastest growing internet markets.
The Competition Commission of India looks to prevent misuse of data in all the deals it assesses, Chairman Ashok Kumar Gupta said in an email interview, declining to comment further on the Facebook-Jio transaction pending examination.

Facebook, in its application to the competition commission, argued that the deal does not alter the competitive landscape in any relevant market. Regulatory filings show Facebook and its unit WhatsApp Inc have proposed to set up a digital marketplace as part of the investment in Jio.
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guest · Jun 24, 2020

CCI approves Facebook-Jio deal
June 24, 2020
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...es-facebook-jio-deal/articleshow/76566015.cms

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Wednesday said it has cleared Facebook's proposed acquisition of 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Reliance Industries.

The $5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) deal -- the single largest FDI in the technology sector in India -- was announced in April. The US social-networking major had set up a separate entity -- Jaadhu Holdings LLC -- for making the investment.
The CCI has approved "acquisition of 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms by Jaadhu Holdings LLC," according to a tweet.

The deal would bring together JioMart, the e-commerce venture of Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, and Facebook's WhatsApp platform to connect consumers with neighbourhood kirana stores.
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guest · Jul 20, 2020

Google confirms it’s investing $4.5 billion in India’s Jio Platforms four months after Facebook’s bet on the company
July 15, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/15/google-jio-platforms-deal.html

Google confirmed Wednesday it’s investing $4.5 billion into Indian digital services firm Jio Platforms in exchange for a 7.7% stake in the company, which is valued at $65 billion.

The investment, reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday and confirmed by Google VP Sameer Samat in a blog post, comes less than four months after Facebook said it was pumping $5.7 billion into Jio Platforms.
Google said it plans to jointly develop an “entry-level affordable smartphone” with Jio Platforms that will be optimized for Android and the Play Store.

“Together we are excited to rethink, from the ground up, how millions of users in India can become owners of smartphones,” wrote Samat in the blog post.
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guest · Sep 3, 2022

mood said: ↑

Reliance and Facebook pilot JioMart grocery shopping on WhatsApp
April 27, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/26/reliance-and-facebook-pilot-jiomart-orders-on-whatsapp/
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Meta and Jio launch grocery shopping on WhatsApp in India
By Manish Singh, Jagmeet Singh - August 29, 2022

Meta and an e-commerce venture between India’s Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms are bringing JioMart grocery shopping to WhatsApp in what they said was the global-first end-to-end shopping experience on the popular instant messaging platform. The launch follows Meta and JioMart beginning to test an integration with select users two years ago.

Customers in India will be able to browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on WhatsApp, add items to cart, make the payments via local payments rail UPI without ever leaving the instant messaging service, the companies said.

“Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp — people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat. Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said in a statement.
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Meta is a significant minority investor in Jio Platforms, the country’s largest telecom subscriber with over 421 million subscribers.

At the company’s general meeting, Ambani said Zuckerberg shares his vision of bringing more people and businesses online and creating a “truly innovative solutions that will add convenience to the daily lives of every Indian.”
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