The world’s two leading IT platforms – Jio and Facebook – have reiterated their commitment to India’s $5 trillion economy push.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Facebook, the social messaging platform, in coming days will speed up its focus on helping India realise the ambitious target.
And to this effect, Zuckerberg sees Small and Medium businesses playing a key role. “At Facebook, we are in the business of serving small businesses. And nowhere is this more true than in India,” said Zuckerberg, The Facebook CEO was in conversation with Mukesh Ambani, Chairman & Managing Director, Reliance Industries, at the Facebook Fuel for India 2020 event.
“With more than 60 million small businesses and millions of people around the country relying on them for jobs – these small businesses form a big part of what our partnership with Jio can serve here.
This is especially important because small businesses in India will be a key part of the global economic recovery going forward. And we’re focused on making sure we build the best tools for them,” he added.
Opening up on the potential of a technology-enabled ecosystem in propelling the economic growth of a highly diversified nation the Reliance Industries’ MD said he sees the country accelerating as a premier digital society.
“To my mind, more wealth creation means more employment and more business. And together with our platforms and the tools that we will provide to small businesses and to individual consumers, I believe will drive India to a 5 trillion economy and will make a much more equal India, with more equal wealth growth at the bottom of the pyramid,” Ambani said.
The Indian economy has a significant share of SMBs and Facebook, together with WhatsApp and WhatsApp business has proved to be invaluable for these firms. In October last year, the social media giant disclosed that it witnessed a 9 % growth in its daily active user base to 1.62 billion in the September 2019 quarter, driven by markets like India and Indonesia. Currently, WhatsApp India’s user base stands at 400 million.
WhatsApp Business App, another popular offering from Facebook Inc’s stable, that’s focused on businesses, is hugely popular too. WhatsApp Business messaging platform comes with a host of business enabling features boasts of more than 50 million users globally, of which, more than 15 million are in India (30%).
Also, more than 40 million users globally view a business catalogue on WhatsApp each month, and in India, more than 3 million users view a business catalogue on WhatsApp each month, says Facebook. On the other hand as per official estimates, Reliance Jio commands a 35.1 per cent market share in India’s huge telephone subscriber base that stands at 404.1 million.
In April this year, Facebook, in its largest-ever investment (since it acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014), had announced its $5.7-billion investment in Reliance Industries’ Jio Platform.
Besides the mega-deal, Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail, and WhatsApp also inked a deal to support small businesses on WhatsApp. The move is essentially aimed at mainstreaming the country’s largely untapped informal economy, particularly its massive Kirana (retail) economy.
As part of the arrangement, the two major business entities have pledged to employ WhatsApp to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s new commerce business on the JioMart platform and to support small businesses on WhatsApp.
