WhatsApp announced it’s rolling out a new feature to help you manage your grocery shopping. The new service, called WhatsApp@grocerystore, will enable users to order fresh produce, meat, and other goods by linking their phone numbers with those of local grocery stores.
Meta and JioMart’s joint venture is now the world’s first end-to-end shopping experience on a popular messaging platform. WhatsApp users will now be able to browse JioMart’s entire grocery catalog on the app, add items to the cart and make payments without having to leave WhatsApp.
The service is available on WhatsApp’s in-app messaging feature. It offers customers a range of fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, and grocery products across 45 cities in India. It will soon expand to include 1,000 cities across the country.
The new Facebook feature is currently available in India and it will be interesting to see how users react to the changes. If successful, we might see this feature make its way to other countries including Pakistan.
“Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp — people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat. Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said in a statement.
Meta is one of the biggest minority investors in Jio Platforms. It intends to invest $25 billion to launch 5G services in India by October and aims to roll out the next generation mobile network in “every team” by the end of 2023.”
JioMart is a $221 billion Indian conglomerate that is meant to be a direct rival to Amazon and Flipkart. Jio is the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world and has over 200 million subscribers on its network in India.