Reliance launches JioMart in more than 200 towns across India

Reliance Industries Ltd has officially launched its online grocery delivery service- JioMart in more than 200 towns across India. The service is now active in across Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Trivandrum and some other tier-II cities too. Reliance has made the JioMart website live after running a pilot for limited pin codes in Mumbai. Customers can now log on to jiomart.com to place an order. Note that the app is not live yet, but it may follow soon.

JioMart will deliver groceries in more than 200 towns across the country, Damodar Mall, CEO, Reliance Retail, said on Twitter late on Saturday. As of now, the JioMart website has listed essential grocery, FMCG goods and farm produce. The company also says it has collaborated with farmers to source selling fruits and vegetables from them. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that product catalogue on JioMart's website would be expanded after lockdown restrictions are eased.

With JioMart, Reliance will rival against the existing giants like Amazon India, Walmart's Flipkart, and other leading micro delivery players like BBDaily, Grofers, Milkbasket and Swiggy's Supr Daily. The fresh produce supply chain connecting farmers to businesses will take on existing players like Crofarm and Ninjacart.

JioMart: a clear threat to competition

JioMart's entry is not a surprise as the company was preparing for a rollout way before the country got hit with Coronavirus pandemic. Now, since the online demand for daily essentials and FMCG good is booming, Reliance sees it as the perfect time to enter the market. "Never waste a crisis, they say!" Mall said in his tweet. He also shared Alibaba's case by quoting his colleague, who said, "Alibaba also flourished starting from the SARS crisis." 

We've seen Reliance Jio disrupting the telecom sector, and being the largest offline retailer having 11,784 stores and a massive amount of user base on the Jio platform; it is already well equipped to take on the smaller players. On top, Jio recently got funded by Facebook, and other firms totalling a hefty investment of Rs 78,562 crores (approx. USD 7 billion). 

Since Facebook now has ties with Reliance Jio, the company is also expected to utilise Facebook-owned services like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook app to integrate shopping feature and reach a broader user base. Facebook told that it had a daily active user base of 1.6 billion in India by Q4, 2019. The company confirmed to Techcrunch that its messaging service WhatsApp had 400 million users in India as of July 2019. JioMart launched its WhatsApp business account, enabling people to track their order and invoice directly on the messenger app. It gives us more reasons to expect something similar going forward, especially after WhatsApp gets a green signal to launch its payment feature in the country.

Lastly, Prime Minister's push to support for getting 'vocal for local' might also drive some customers towards the platform as Jio has grown as one of the biggest homegrown brands to become a household name in no time.

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