India's Richest Man Is Getting WhatsApp's Help in Effort to Crush Amazon and Walmart

Mukesh Ambani -- India's wealthiest man -- entered the country's e-commerce market with a bang last year and take on American heavyweights Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT). Ambani's JioMart e-commerce venture scaled up rapidly in a short time, thanks to parent company Reliance Retail's already extensive physical footprint across the country.

JioMart is now all set to scale up to the next level, thanks to its partnership with Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), which invested $5.7 billion in Ambani's Jio Platforms venture last year for a 9.99% stake. At that time, Ambani had spoken of his intention to connect local shopkeepers with their customers digitally using WhatsApp -- Facebook's instant-messaging service. And now, Reliance Retail has announced that it will embed the JioMart app within WhatsApp in a move that could rapidly expand its reach.

Image source: Getty Images

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Source Fool.com