Facebook is investing in Indian telecom giant Jio for e-commerce

NEW DELHI (AP) – Facebook says it plans to invest $5.7 billion in Indian telecom giant Reliance Jio.

The investment will give Facebook a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms, the digital technology and applications arm of Reliance Industries. Reliance Jio has the largest number of customers in the country and plans to expand its e-commerce business using WhatsApp.

“India is a unique country for Facebook,” Ajit Mohan, head of Facebook India, wrote in an online post, highlighting India’s digital transformation as one of the main reasons for the investment.

India is one of the fastest-growing internet markets in the world, and the number of users will grow to 907 million by 2023, according to Cisco forecasts published in February.

The number of new internet users increased after Reliance Industries launched Jio in 2016, offering cheap smartphones and even cheaper data rates. Jio currently has over 388 million mobile and data subscribers.

Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance and India’s richest man, said he feels “honored” to have Facebook as a long-term partner and that the investment will help push India’s digital progress.

“The synergy between Jio and Facebook will help in achieving Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ mission,” he said, referring to the government program aimed at making life and business more efficient in the country.

Facebook and its instant messaging platform WhatsApp are popular in India, which, with 1.3 billion people, has the most Facebook users in the world. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, largely blocks access to Facebook and other social media from outside China.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, said he hopes to give India’s 60 million small businesses the digital tools they need to thrive.

“With communities around the world isolated, many of these entrepreneurs need digital tools they can rely on to find and connect with customers and grow their businesses,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

In February, after two years of trials, WhatsApp also got the green light to launch its digital payments platform – WhatsApp Pay – in India.

The approval comes after the Reserve Bank of India and the Domestic Payments Corporation of India agreed to launch the payment platform in a phased manner.