Earlier this month, Facebook bought almost 10% of the Indian telecommunications company, Reliance Jio.
Why does it make sense for a social media company to buy a stake in a telecommunications company? Well, Facebook is looking for ways to grow its user base and for new markets to get into.
Reliance Jio wants to raise money to support all its digital expansion plans. This gives it some of the money it needs.
In addition, Reliance Jio had announced the start of an e-commerce platform called JioMart, a way for small physical stores (like your neighbourhood store) to get on one platform, and offer their wares to more people in neighbourhoods. Facebook owns Whatsapp. With this partnership, JioMart can use Whatsapp as a way for people to place and pay for their orders, for example. This can turbo charge JioMart.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder and CEO of Facebook, said that like this, there are many other ways in which the two companies can work together to create communities of users and to help them with more services. In addition, Facebook will be able to grow its user base in India.
Stay tuned to see how this pans out!
