Jio-Facebook Partnership- A New Collaboration After Byju's, Meesho and Unacademy

India has gone through a rapid digital transformation over the last few years. After coming of Jio into existence in the Indian ecosystem. This contribution in the Indian market has increased the use of smartphone and internet with a great pace and it has grown exponentially. Now, Jio has collaborated with a social media giant Facebook, making it the world’s largest made by any technology company in the world. Let us read the key aspects of Jio-Facebook Partnership.

Highlights of Jio-Facebook Partnership

The Facebook Inc. is the world’s largest social media company. The company has announced that it has invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake as a minority investor in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms in the nation’s most valued firm, Reliance Industries which is the biggest telecom operator in the country with more than 370 million subscribers giving its services in all the sectors of telecom operations.

Jio was valued at $65.95 billion at the pre-money valuation period. This makes Facebook- the social giant, the largest minority shareholder in the Indian telecom network by bidding for nearly 10% of the stakes in Reliance Jio telecom subsidiary platform.

Also Read: Mukesh Ambani Is All Set To Revolutionize The E-Commerce Industry with JioMart

This Jio-Facebook Partnership is the largest investment made by any company; for a minority stake by a technology company anywhere in the world and the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in the technology space in India.

The Jio-Facebook Partnership will work in the direction of bringing together JioMart, which will be an e-commerce business retail platform which will be providing all types of facilities under a single platform using the technologies and data of both the companies. Some of the experts are also saying that, this can be the nation’s largest retail chain, with the integration of WhatsApp as this messaging platform is having a biggest market with more than 400 million users. WhatsApp is also the most popular smartphone app in India.

Also Read: Reliance JioMart goes Live on Whatsapp and starts Operations in Mumbai Suburbs

Working Model of Jio-Facebook Partnership

The Reliance Jio-Facebook Partnership wants to replicate the USP of Wechat in India by creating an all-in one, multi-utility platform named as ’JioMart’.

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, mobile payment app and social media platform developed by Tancent. It was first released in 2011, and gained so much popularity that it became one of the world's largest standalone mobile apps in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Due to exponential increase in the popularity, WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a "super app" because of its multiple range of functions under a same console roof.

The JioMart platform will be having all the payment facility and E-commerce of Jio itself, who is having all its platform ready to use eg:- Ajio, JioMoney. The company is going to integrate WhatsApp facility for completing any type of purchasing with the help of WhatsApp payments option. All the other facilities which are not provided by them, will be provided with the integration of retailers of those special services. This specially include, the kirana-retailor, which will be helping them to complete their all-facility-single-platform-hub. So, in this way, this collaboration is going to replicate the model of WeChat in India.

Other Investment of Facebook in India

This is not the first time when Facebook has made any investment in India. From the past, it has been seen that the Facebook has made some investment in some of the other tech start-ups. Some of these startups consist of edutech and social commerce reseller platform.

1. The social commerce reseller platform, Meesho has been funded by Facebook with around $20-25 million. It is a platform where people act themselves as a seller by just listing it on their digital-social groups, in other words a drop-shipping business in your local group.
2. The edutech startup Byju's has been funded by Facebook with around $50 million. This startup works on the interactive way of providing education of students from primary classes to all the competitive exams.
3. The edutech startup Unacademy has been funded by Facebook with around $110 million. This startup provides the best teachers for all types of competitive exams and provides a focus on detailed study while sitting in any corner of the country

These funded startups are: Byju's, Unacademy and Meesho. Though exact amounts of  investment is not disclosed in these cases but, it is a well-known fact that the Facebook is just trying to integrate every type of business platform with the widely used messaging app i.e. Whatsapp. This will help Facebook in getting the data of the people, which can help Facebook to run a suitable ads for it, according to the needs and requirements of the people which can become a potential customers of different other businesses via Facebook ads marketplace.