Facebook buys nearly 10 percent stakes in Jio

Facebook made a big investment in the Indian telecom company Jio. The investment is worth $5.7 billion for a minority stake of a little less than 10%. This is the single biggest minority investment by a technology player in India.

The move by Facebook to invest in Jio amid the COVID-19 pandemic when economies have taken a hit, signals at the confidence that tech giant holds in the Indian economy and market post the coronavirus outbreak. This does give strong signs that India is going to emerge as the new growth center for world economies.

India has always had a big community of Facebook products, whether it is Instagram or WhatsApp, and with Jio strongly upholding the biggest subscriber base in India, this is Facebook’s move to establish itself in the Indian market by properly utilizing the assets of Jio.

This deal opens up a lot of opportunities on how the tech will be used and what all can be made out of the deal. There are reports that state that Facebook and Jio can work on a payment gateway to service commerce.

JioMart, which is Jio’s new commerce initiative could see a boost and can use WhatsApp messenger as part of it.

WhatsApp Pay which was debuted last year but has not been able to capture enough market and has been facing various hurdles from regulatory approvals can surely benefit from this deal.

Well, for now, there have been no comments from Facebook on what could be the end result of the deal and what it is aimed at. Only time will tell how good of a deal is this for Facebook.