Reliance begins using WhatsApp for grocery deliveries through JioMart

The Facebook deal will help Ambani set up a digital platform to take on Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart in an e-commerce market

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has started testing WhatsApp to connect customers to grocery stores, days after Facebook decided to invest $5.7 billion in digital assets controlled by the company. JioMart, an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, "has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders" in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Credit Suisse said in a report.

"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 Kirana and pays in cash," it said, adding the