BENGALURU (Reuters) – Facebook (FB.O) will spend $5.7 billion for 10% of Reliance Industries’s (RELI.NS) digital business, as the social media firm looks to leverage its popular WhatsApp messenger to offer digital payment services to small grocers in India.
FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed Facebook logo is placed between small toy people figures in front of a keyboard in this illustration taken April 12, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
The deal will help Reliance cut debt that has piled up in its push to secure top spot for its Jio Infocomm telco, and help boost its new online grocery marketplace JioMart.
India’s online grocery market is lucrative but competitive, with Amazon.com’s (AMZN.O) Pantry jostling for market share with Walmart’s (WMT.N) Flipkart and BigBasket, backed by China’s Alibaba (BABA.N).
But a lot of untapped value lies in India’s kirana stores, or small grocers, lifeblood of the country’s $375 billion grocery industry, according to data from the…
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