Earlier this week, Facebook came out with a huge announcement, that it was investing $5.7 billion into Jio Platforms Limited for a 10% stake in the company. Jio Platforms Limited is the parent company of the popular telecom service in India, Reliance Jio, which has amassed over 380 million users since its launch in September 2016. The companies also announced that “Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail and WhatsApp also entered into a commercial partnership agreement to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s New Commerce business on the JioMart platform using WhatsApp and to support small businesses on WhatsApp.”
Jio and Facebook in their own rights have been a massive part of a large part of India going online. WhatsApp has over 400 million monthly active users in the country while Jio has over 380 million telecom subscribers. But by coming together, the companies could achieve a lot more and would complement each other quite nicely.