Reliance Industries (RIL) is testing its online grocery service, JioMart, across India amid coronavirus-induced lockdown. JioMart is now delivering in more than 200 cities, Damodar Mall, the chief executive officer of Reliance Retail’s grocery business said in a tweet. JioMart had last month started a pilot project serving users in three neighbourhoods surrounding Mumbai.
JioMart is being piloted in cities such as Nokha (Rajasthan), Bodhan (Telangana), Nagercoil (Tamil Nadu), Tadepalligudem (Andhra), Rayagada (Odisha) and Darjeeling (Bengal), Mall said in another tweet.
JioMart aims to directly take on rivals Amazon India and Walmart's Flipkart in the huge Indian market.
READ: Reliance's JioMart goes live on WhatsApp in select areas. Here is how it works
Last month, soon after RIL inked a multi-billion dollar partnership with Facebook-owned WhatsApp, the JioMart service went live on the messaging platform in select areas on the outskirts of Mumbai. It launched a small pilot of JioMart deliveries in select areas of India's financial capital.
JioMart is a WhatsApp based grocery ordering service. The JioMart shopping app is available via WhatsApp, which in India has about 400 million users. JioMart is an online grocery shopping destination that is powered by Reliance Retail's Smart and Fresh stores. The website reliancesmart.in also redirects to jiomart.com.
The site has a full-fledged catalogue spanning categories such as fruits and vegetables, dairy and bakery, personal care, home care and baby care, among others.
Reliance has integrated its registered customer database from Reliance Fresh and other retail businesses into JioMart. A delivery fee of Rs 25 is levied if the order value is less than Rs 750.
Ambani has been selling stakes in Jio Platforms as he tries to bring Reliance’s net debt of more than $20 billion down to zero before March 2021. Reliance wants to shift away from oil and petrochemicals toward faster-growing consumer businesses.
