WhatsApp users in India can now do their grocery shopping without leaving their messaging app .
Meta with JioMart, through which users can send a text message with the word “Hello” to a certain number and access an in-app shopping experience.
” Meta is convinced that business messaging is a big part of how WhatsApp will make money in the future,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta announcing the partnership.
Ultimately, Meta wants WhatsApp to be a WeChat-style super app, the one app users need to run their entire lives. WeChat users can pay rent on the app, buy concert tickets, pay for food, and much more.
Any platform that can manage people’s lives is basically guaranteed to make a fortune in the process, through payment processing fees, premium features, and ads.
No other platform has come close to WeChat’s level of dominance, but with , WhatsApp has more of a chance than most. , with approximately 400 million users in the country. WhatsApp is free, doesn’t require a lot of data, and works on phones of any range.
Meanwhile, JioMart is an e-commerce company run by Jio Platforms. Jio itself is part of Reliance, one of the companies responsible for cheap phones and services that have brought many Indian citizens online for the first time. Reliance today announced that it plans to spend another 25 billion from India by the end of next year.
Whatsapp has been around for the past two years, continues to push user-to-user payments, and is actively developing .
WhatsApp is meant to be an encrypted place for you to talk to your loved ones, but it can also be a place for you to talk to your airline, grocery store, hair stylist, and accountant, so the app can become a more powerful place. .
