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Category: e-commerce

  • Paytm Insider announces its new theatre initiative, ‘Front & Centre’

    Paytm Insider announces its new theatre initiative, ‘Front & Centre’

    NEW DELHI: India’s leading entertainment ticketing platform, Paytm Insider is set to deliver theatre experiences digitally with its new initiative, ‘Front & Centre’. Created keeping in mind storytellers as well as theatre-lovers, this initiative aims to bring the experience of theatre alive, online. 

    ‘Front & Centre’ is launching with a showcase of notable plays Every Brilliant Thing by QTP and Iti Ninna Amrita (Kannada) by Rangashankara Theatre in July, followed in August by One on One – Unlocked by Rage Productions, Timeloss produced by Akvarious Productions and Doppelganger by The Company Theatre. A key focus for Paytm Insider with this is bringing theatre productions in regional languages from across India in the spotlight. The plays currently featured are in Hindi, English and Kannada and more productions in other languages will continue to be added.

    Paytm Insider CEO, Shreyas Srinivasan, adds “Over the last year, we’ve brought several exciting theatre productions forward including plays by Aadyam, Salim-Suleiman’s Umrao Jaan and storytelling works by Kommune. The launch of Front & Centre reaffirms our investment in strengthening the vibrant theatre ecosystem in India.”

    ‘Front & Centre’ has conducted its first workshops with sessions on Audio Drama with Frederick Greenhalgh, Scriptwriting with Carl Miller, and Comedy writing with Anuvab Pal. With these workshops, Paytm Insider aims to provide a lens into the art of theatre for those already in the field, and even for those stepping into it. Paytm Insider is supported on this initiative by Shernaz Patel and Nadir Khan, using decades of their experience to re-imagine theatre for the digital world.

    Speaking on the IP, Creative consultant, Front & Centre, Nadir Khan, said, “Lockdowns and social-distancing provide much disturbance to a form that is meant to be consumed live and is essentially a dialogue between a performer and a live audience. At its very core, however, theatre is about story-telling. Stories that need to be told and need to be heard. Stories that excite, entertain, provoke, educate and inspire. With Front & Centre, we’re hoping to provide a home for theatre practitioners to continue doing just that, albeit online for now. It’s a new medium, really, and the challenges that come with that are both exciting and daunting.  I’m very happy, therefore, that Paytm Insider has decided to dive head-first into it with Front & Centre and has allowed me to be a part of that journey. I’m certain that this will help Indian theatre to continue to work, grow, collaborate, innovate, stay relevant, engage and (most of all) continue that dialogue between the performer and  audience.”

    Speaking on the IP, Creative consultant, Front & Centre, Shernaz Patel – "If I had been told three months ago that the internet would be my new stage and the sofa my new auditorium I would have laughed disbelievingly. I am a purist. I thrive on the live and immediate thrill of theatre and shy away from technology. And yet like it or not here we are. I could have hibernated. But Insider’s Front & Centre came along at the right time and made me embrace this new normal. Because it’s a platform that understands that theatre is vital. That theatre is where compelling stories get told. That theatre has a unique place in our collective culture to educate, inspire and entertain." 

    Speaking on the launch, Paytm Insider Business Head Live entertainment (IPs & Partnerships) –  Varun  Khare said, “As large gatherings to watch theatre productions remain a thing of the distant future and live performing arts are adopting a new alternative of moving online. We're working hard to create a sustainable ecosystem for artists, producers, promoters & all those behind the scenes to come together to continue entertaining fans across the country. We strive to make it a great alternative medium to entertain fans. With Front & Centre, we hope to (re)connect fans with the power of theatre and storytelling.”

  • Amazon Web Services appoints Manoj Padmanabhan as M&E business development head

    Amazon Web Services appoints Manoj Padmanabhan as M&E business development head

    KOLKATA: Amazon Web Services has appointed Manoj Padmanabhan as media and entertainment business development head. Prior to this, he was associated with Horizon Broadcast Electronics Pvt Ltd as director. 

    Padmanabhan’s experience spans over more than two decades in several industries including durables, telecom, broadcast, digital media. He has handled leadership roles in general management, P&L, sales & business development, marketing/brand management. 

    He worked with brands like Videocon, Sansui, Toshiba, Tata Indicom, Zee. He was associated with Zee for eight years where he also served as business head of Ditto TV.

  • Paytm to acquire Raheja QBE General Insurance to expand financial services offerings

    Paytm to acquire Raheja QBE General Insurance to expand financial services offerings

    NEW DELHI: India's homegrown financial technology platform Paytm (owned by One 97 Communications Ltd) along with Vijay Shekhar Sharma is set to acquire Mumbai-based private sector general insurer Raheja QBE. The acquisition is subject to customary conditions, including, approval from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI). Raheja QBE which started its operations in 2009, is a joint venture between Prism Johnson Ltd and QBE Insurance Group, one of Australia’s largest insurers. The company said that all employees of Raheja QBE would continue working at Mumbai and other locations.

    This strategic acquisition is through QorQl Pvt Ltd, a technology company with a majority shareholding of Vijay Shekhar Sharma and remaining held by Paytm. After enabling millions of Indians with services of homegrown Payments bank, it is now setting sights on democratising general insurance services.

    India's Paytm has a large consumer base and merchant ecosystem with extensive knowledge of consumer behaviour. The company would leverage this reach to innovate insurance products and services to accelerate its reach and adoption. It is in furtherance of Paytm’s mission of driving financial inclusion for over half a billion Indians.

    Paytm president  Amit Nayyar said, "We are excited to welcome Raheja QBE General Insurance into the Paytm family. Its strong management team will help us accelerate our journey of taking insurance to the large population of India with the aim to create a tech-driven, multi-channel general insurance company with innovative and affordable insurance products.”

    QBE Australia Pacific CEO Vivek Bhatia said, “Today’s announcement marks both a continuation of QBE’s strategy to simplify our business and the beginning of a new & exciting chapter for our strong team at Raheja QBE.”

    Prism Johnson Ltd MD Vijay Aggarwal said, "We are happy to announce the sale transaction of our entire 51 percent stake in Raheja QBE General Insurance Company Limited. Our decision to sell our stake in Raheja QBE is in line with our mission to create sustainable shareholder value and will enable us to focus our resources on our core businesses. This move will help the insurance business scale up to new heights by leveraging the large customer base and innovative products offered by Paytm. I would like to thank Raheja QBE’s management team and all the employees for their strong contribution and commitment over the years and wish them every success."

  • Dance With Madhuri partners with BookMyShow to host online dance classes

    Dance With Madhuri partners with BookMyShow to host online dance classes

    NEW DELHI: Madhuri Dixit Nene’s premier dance academy Dance With Madhuri (DWM) has joined hands with BookMyShow, India’s leading entertainment destination, to expand its dance e-learning offerings to dance lovers across the country. Currently, DWM offers its online dance courses via its standalone web/mobile apps and 4 DTH TV networks. This strategic association with BookMyShow is a step forward in reaching out to a wider user base. The initiative, which will kickstart from July 1st, 2020, will empower users to learn dance from the best choreographers & experts including Madhuri Dixit Nene.

    DWM, one of the leading e-learning platforms, has seen exponential growth globally, especially in this period of lockdown and has rolled out a lot of add-on free classes and activities to keep its users engaged from the safety of their homes. Through this association, users across age groups can choose to learn dance from a wide range of forms such as Kathak and Hip-hop, amongst others.

    Dixit said, “With the ongoing global lockdown & social distancing, we didn’t want people losing an opportunity to learn something new. Hence, we teamed up with BookMyShow to empower everyone with dance”

    BookMyShow, COO live entertainment Albert Almeida added, “We are excited to partner with ‘Dance With Madhuri’ to cater to millions of our users during this period. This association is an extension of our wide range of in-home entertainment offerings and we are happy to bring a compelling dance property helmed by the dancing icon Madhuri Dixit Nene, for our users across age groups.”

  • Amazon expands Pantry service to over 300 cities in India

    Amazon expands Pantry service to over 300 cities in India

    NEW DELHI: Amazon.in today announced the expansion of its popular program ‘Amazon Pantry’ to over 300 cities across the country. Customers in Allahabad, Amreli, Bareilly, Betul, Bhopal, Bundi, Bhandara, Churu, Deogarh, Gonda, Jammu, Jhansi, Kathua, Kozhikode, Malda, Moradabad, Nainital, Pathankot, Rajkot, Shimla, Udaipur and Varanasi among others can now conveniently order groceries on Amazon Pantry. 

    With Amazon Pantry, customers get curated grocery and everyday essentials at great prices with savings of up to 35 per cent on monthly groceries of staples and branded FMCG products. They can choose from a selection of 3000 products from more than 200 brands and get them at their doorstep in just one to two days. In select cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune, customers can also choose from convenient time slots to schedule their Pantry deliveries. 

    Amazon India 

    director – category management Saurabh Srivastava said, “At Amazon, we are committed to be an ‘everything’ and ‘everyday’ marketplace for our customers and constantly focus on increasing selection, convenience, ease and speed of delivery across the country. Amazon Pantry has become popular with customers as it fulfils their grocery demands and gives them great savings. With this expansion, customers in more than 300 cities & towns can get access to safe doorstep delivery of grocery essentials.”

    Amazon Pantry will now be available to customers in more than 10,000 pin codes. In the last few months, hundreds of towns like Bharatpur in Rajasthan, Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, Fatehabad in Haryana and Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh among others were added to help customers order groceries online and get safe doorstep delivery. 

    Sellers participating on Amazon Pantry offer selection ranging across staples, cooking essentials, snacks, beverages, packaged food, household supplies, personal care, skin care, pet food, baby products such as diapers & baby food and lots more. 

  • Snapdeal engages experts from Indian Institute of Counselling for employee wellness

    Snapdeal engages experts from Indian Institute of Counselling for employee wellness

    MUMBAI: Snapdeal, an e-commerce platform, has onboarded experts from the Indian Institute of Counselling experts to provide easy access to its employees who wish to seek counselling support to handle any issues of anxiety or stress in their lives.

    Considering the current testing times with unprecedented uncertainties, it is natural for people to feel anxious. The initiative is an attempt to build a positive and relaxed frame of mind by providing access to mental health professionals who are trained and experienced in helping people deal with anxieties. The entire process is confidential and counsellors can be reached via a telephone number available to the team.

    The company has also scheduled mental wellness awareness webinars for all its employees with experts from the industry. The webinar aims to support employees in functioning effectively, coping with day-to-day stress and being productive and positive as individuals.

    Snapdeal has begun multiple initiatives to keep the team motivated and healthy from day one of the lockdown. One such program is ‘Hustle for Muscle’, created to encourage employees to stay healthy and fit. Each day a video displaying a different form of exercise or activity, such as at home Zumba, Yoga, Aerobics, etc., is shared with the team to help them kick-start their day on a high-energy note.

    “At Snapdeal, the wellbeing of every team member is of paramount importance. We are encouraging and supporting team members in pursuing physical and mental well-being,” said a Snapdeal spokesperson.

    With all teams working diligently from home, the company has also launched a Snapdeal Radio featuring curated songs to begin the day positively as well as a daily tip that makes WFH more productive and helps the teams balance their work and personal lives.

    Additionally, Snapdeal has started fun games and contests such as Online Scavenger Hunt or “Ghar ghar mein talent hai”, wherein family members of teams showcase the talent hidden in their own homes. The “I Commit to a 21-day Miracle” was also launched, urging people to pick up a new activity or hobby that makes them happy and helps release suppressed stress created by the pandemic forcing people indoors. Other recent fun interactions are the introduction of childhood favorite games and engaging activities like Tambola etc.

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  • Amazon’s net income down to $2.5 billion in Q1

    Amazon’s net income down to $2.5 billion in Q1

    MUMBAI: Amazon.com, Inc. today announced financial results for its first quarter ending March 31, 2020. The result is a measure of how the Covid2019 pandemic is affecting the overall online shopping experience.

    Net income decreased to $2.5 billion in the first quarter, or $5.01 per diluted share, compared with net income of $3.6 billion, or $7.09 per diluted share, in first quarter 2019.

    Operating cash flow increased 16 per cent to $39.7 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $34.4 billion for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2019.

    Free cash flow increased to $24.3 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $23.0 billion for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2019.

    Net sales increased 26 per cent to $75.5 billion in the first quarter, compared with $59.7 billion in first quarter 2019. Excluding the $387 million unfavourable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 27 per cent compared with first quarter 2019.

    Operating income decreased to $4.0 billion in the first quarter, compared with operating income of $4.4 billion in first quarter 2019.

    “From online shopping to AWS to Prime Video and Fire TV, the current crisis is demonstrating the adaptability and durability of Amazon’s business as never before, but it’s also the hardest time we’ve ever faced,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder-CEO.

    He further added: “Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion, and perhaps a bit more, on Covid-related expenses getting products to customers and keeping employees safe. This includes investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of our facilities, less efficient process paths that better allow for effective social distancing, higher wages for hourly teams, and hundreds of millions to develop our own COVID-19 testing capabilities.”

    “There is a lot of uncertainty in the world right now, and the best investment we can make is in the safety and well-being of our hundreds of thousands of employees. I’m confident that our long-term oriented shareowners will understand and embrace our approach, and that in fact they would expect no less,” he added.

    Covid2019 and employees

    Amazon made over 150 significant process changes in its operations network and Whole Foods Market stores to help teams stay healthy — and it conducts daily audits of the measures we’ve put into place.

    “A team of Amazonians — from research scientists and program managers to procurement specialists and software engineers — has moved from their normal day jobs to a dedicated team working to build incremental testing capacity. The team is building its first lab and has begun a pilot to test front-line employees. We’re not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it’s worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn. In March and April, we announced plans to and have now hired 175,000 people in our fulfillment and delivery network in response to increased customer demand and to assist existing employees. We are happy to welcome these new hires to our team and are continuing to hire,” said the company.

    Alexa is helping customers stay informed and connected, and can now answer tens of thousands of questions related to Covid2019.

    “We’re working to provide accurate and timely information from official government and news sources, globally. Alexa also provides an experience that helps customers in Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, and the U.S. check their risk level for COVID-19. Customers can ask, “Alexa, what do I do if I think I have COVID-19?” or “Alexa, what do I do if I think I have coronavirus?” Alexa then asks a series of questions about the person’s symptoms and possible exposure and provides guidance sourced from local health authorities.”

    Amazon is supporting small businesses by partnering with American Express and its Stand for Small initiative, providing free use of business tools that help with virtual communication and collaboration, such as Amazon Chime, Amazon WorkDocs, and Amazon WorkSpaces, as well as enabling small businesses to use the cloud at no charge for 12 months with AWS Free Tier.

    Shopping and entertainment

    Amazon ranked #1 in the 2019 American Customer Satisfaction Index Internet Retail Category and has been ranked in the top 10 for the past 11 years. In the UK, the Institute of Customer Service named Amazon as the company with the best customer service score for the past decade.

    Prime Video launched Prime Video Cinema in the US, the UK, and Germany. Prime Video Cinema is a premium movie rental offering that allows customers to stream in-theatre movies at home, including titles such as Birds of Prey, Emma, The Invisible Man, Onward,andTrolls World Tour.

    Customers in the US, the UK, and Germany can now rent or buy hundreds of thousands of video titles directly from the Prime Video app on Apple iOS 12 devices and the Apple TV Gen 4+, including new release movies, award-winning TV shows, and Oscar-nominated movies.

    Prime Video premiered several new Amazon Original series including the reality competition Making the Cut, hosted and executive produced by Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn; The Forgotten Army in India; Love Island in France; Celebrity Hunted in Italy; and the docuseries The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team in Australia.

    Prime Video and the National Football League (NFL) announced a multi-year agreement to renew their partnership to deliver a live digital stream of 11 Thursday Night Football games as well as exclusive global streaming rights to one additional regular season game. All NFL games on Prime Video are available at no extra cost to Prime members.

    Amazon launched Amazon.nl and a new Prime program for the Netherlands marketplace. Amazon Prime includes unlimited free shipping, Prime Video, Twitch Prime, and Amazon Photos.

    Devices and Alexa

    Alexa is available on even more devices including TV, mobile, and auto and is now available on select LG and Samsung Smart TV 2020 models and the new OnePlus 8 mobile phone. Additionally, BMW customers in the U.S., and MINI customers in the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, and Austria can now access Alexa on select models.

    Amazon introduced a new speaking style for Alexa skills, enabling U.S. developers to build more natural long-form content experiences by adding conversational pauses to Alexa’s speech when reading articles or blogs.

    Fire TV’s content catalog continues to grow internationally with new apps, including Disney+, available on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

    Amazon Web Services

    AWS announced the opening of the AWS Europe (Milan) and AWS Africa (Cape Town) Regions. AWS now spans 76 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan, and Spain.

    AWS announced the general availability of Amazon Detective, a security service that makes it easy for customers to conduct faster and more efficient investigations into security issues across their AWS workloads. Amazon Detective automatically collects log data from a customer’s resources and uses machine learning, statistical analysis, and graph theory to build interactive visualizations that help customers analyze, investigate, and quickly identify the root cause of potential security issues or suspicious activities.

    AWS announced the general availability of Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra), a scalable, highly available, and fully managed database service for Cassandra workloads. Amazon Keyspaces supports the same application code, Apache 2.0 licensed drivers, and developer tools that customers running Cassandra workloads use today. With Amazon Keyspaces, customers can easily migrate on-premises Cassandra workloads to the cloud, without having to provision, configure, and operate servers or large Cassandra clusters, or needing to manually add or remove nodes or rebalance partitions as traffic scales up or down.

    AWS announced the general availability of Amazon Augmented Artificial Intelligence (Amazon A2I), a fully managed service that makes it easy to add human review to machine learning predictions to enhance model and application accuracy by continuously identifying and improving low confidence predictions. Human review for model predictions can be added to new or existing applications using reviewers from Mechanical Turk, third party vendors, or a customer’s own employees.

    AWS is helping schools around the world quickly deploy and transition to online learning through its EdTech customers and partners. In Egypt, the Ministry of Education and CDSM Thinqi are standing up instant access to online learning content, where 22 million K-12 students are able to continue their education in the midst of COVID-19; and in India, EdTech startup Impartus is launching virtual classrooms for more than 530,000 students — the online equivalent of 13,000 physical classrooms. AWS is also working with Blackboard, the largest education technology and services company in the world, enabling them to scale to 50x their usual capacity within a 24-hour timeframe to meet the global surge in demand of daily users for their virtual teaching and learning platform.

    Second quarter 2020 guidance

    Net sales are expected to be between $75.0 billion and $81.0 billion, or to grow between 18 per cent and 28 per cent compared with second quarter 2019. This guidance anticipates an unfavorable impact of approximately 70 basis points from foreign exchange rates.

    Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(1.5) billion and $1.5 billion, compared with $3.1 billion in second quarter 2019. This guidance assumes approximately $4.0 billion of costs related to COVID-19.

    This guidance assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, investments, restructurings, or legal settlements are concluded.

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  • Snapdeal adds more games from Gamezop

    Snapdeal adds more games from Gamezop

    MUMBAI: E-commerce marketplace Snapdeal added a range of popular games from Gamezop to its platform. Through this arrangement, obstacle crossing fun games like Savage Revenge, Tower Twist, Battle Fish, Rafting Adventure, and Sticky Goo are now available for users on Snapdeal.

    Users will be able to play these games instantly within Snapdeal’s properties without the need to install them as standalone apps. Additionally, each game will have a predefined target for users; upon achieving these targets, discount codes will be unlocked that can be redeemed against purchases on the eCommerce giant. These games are driving higher engagement with shoppers who are regularly visiting the platform as they wait for the complete range of products to be made available. At present, only government-defined essentials can be shipped out via e-commerce platforms.

    A Snapdeal spokesperson commented, “Online games create ways for our users to spend more time indoors during the lockdown. With Gamezop, we are excited to bring a suite of engaging games to our platform.”

    “Snapdeal’s penetrating reach across India has fascinated us for a long while. We are extremely excited to play our part in increasing time spent and transactions on their platforms,” remarked Gamezop head of partnerships  Manpreet Randhawa  .

    Earlier, Snapdeal built games like Stack up, Jackpot Machine, Find The Queen, Guess The Price, Spin the Wheel and Shuffle and Win on the platform. Some of these games unlock coupon codes for discounts on the app.

    Gamezop has over 250 popular games and more than 25 million monthly active users. Its games can also be played on hundreds of other apps, including UC Browser, ixigo, Grofers, NewsPoint, and Xender.

    During this ongoing lockdown, Snapdeal has witnessed a 24X increase in items on its wishlist, with users waiting to buy apparel, personal grooming products, fitness accessories and household items like pressure cookers, kitchen tools, LED bulbs, bed sheets & towels, etc. Nearly 25 per cent of the lockdown shopping list is generated by new shoppers on Snapdeal. Users are also waiting to buy spiritual books, anti-snoring devices, musical instruments etc.

  • Is FB-Jio deal just a great Indian e-commerce story?

    Is FB-Jio deal just a great Indian e-commerce story?

    MUMBAI: What has been hogging the limelight lately? The Rs-43,574-crore Facebook-Jio deal. When the entire country continues to be bogged down by the Covid2019 pandemic, when marketing sentiments were at their nether, the deal came as a big surprise, a refreshing break from all the gloom and doom. Indeed, it is worth the tom-tom, for, the world’s largest social media group has just invested in India’s largest telecom operator, Jio, run by the country’s richest man Mukesh Ambani. Irrefutably, it's a multifaceted deal, but more skewed towards e-commerce play. Even though Jio’s parent company Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has a hold over the Indian media and entertainment ecosystem, there have been speculations about its impact on the sector but it's going to be a minor one for now.

    Because the two giants have been known to disrupt the ecosystems over and again, it's not easy to predict the direction this new association might take. But the e-commerce ambition is unquestionable and has become more evident with JioMart going live on WhatsApp in some areas of Mumbai. Announcing the deal, Jio said: “Our focus will be India’s 60 million micro, small and medium businesses, 120 million farmers, 30 million small merchants and millions of small and medium enterprises in the informal sector.”

    Will India get its own WeChat?

    SBICap Securities institutional equity research head Rajiv Sharma says WhatsApp Payments is in the process of getting launched and it took five years for Paytm to get all the vendors and merchants signed up. While Jio is doing this kirana commerce, it will be significantly faster for WhatsApp Payments to go to market thanks to the partnership. 

    “For Facebook, it is ‘get set go’ on the WhatsApp Payments and WhatsApp Business and if it can make it work here then not only it will improve the value but also the investment it has made, and it will create a new revenue stream. And that model can be replicated in other countries,” he adds.

    An analyst unwilling to be named says WhatsApp will turn out as WeChat of India as Facebook will use even Instagram and look at expanding the horizon by looking at other sectors like healthcare as well. According to him, Jio is going to create a market along with Facebook through this “thick partnership.” It will empower them to do multiple businesses. 

    “I'd always said India will be eventually a hybrid e-commerce market with neighbourhood kirana stores being an integral part of fulfilment strategy. JioMart and WhatsApp have the potential to significantly build on this model and change the rules of the e-commerce landscape in India. While on one side the ease of WhatsApp will make it convenient for consumers to transact, the reach and prowess of the JioMart engine will provide the necessary boost to WhatsApp to exponentially grow as a business platform. It will be interesting to see how Google Spot and Paytm Mall play out their strategies in this space,” PwC India media, entertainment and sports advisory, partner and leader Raman Kalra says.

    What Jio gets out of it?

    Ambani’s biggest bet for the future will also benefit from the deal. The first and foremost is Jio’s debt coming down as RIL may go soon with the former’s initial public offering (IPO). Moreover, the company had laid out a plan to become net debt-free. The deal also comes at a time when the market is significantly hit by the Covid2019 crisis, making business worse for many tycoons. And not to be forgotten, RIL’s oil business may face a huge headwind in the future, especially with the delay in its deal with Saudi Aramco too.

    Sharma explains that while Jio is focusing a lot on commerce, WhatsApp is a great brand to make it very easy for the kirana guys to relate to, if you have payments linked to your chat. Elara Capital VP – research analyst (media) Karan Taurani says that access to Facebook’s large user base across apps will help Jio’s e-commerce ambition, making it a large entity after Amazon and Flipkart. 

    “Across various platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), FB enjoys significant time wallet share of Indian consumers and with Jio's reach across content and commerce, it creates an attractive value proposition and stickiness for existing consumers as well as the incremental net new consumers. This boost can fuel the digital adoption across multiple untapped segments of society across end consumers and small businesses. With Facebook's focus around groups and communities, the extended reach can provide an exponential boost across healthcare and education segments,” Kalra adds. 

    Will the media and entertainment sector see an immediate impact?

    Although e-commerce is the biggest narrative here, stakeholders and experts across the media and entertainment sector are also evaluating the deal. This is not unpredictable as RIL has built its own media empire by acquiring majority stakes in networks, content production studios, etc. While there is no short-term impact, the combined force can create another wave of disruption in the industry.

    Sharma says that both could share insights around consumers and subscribers, based on data that could allow them to understand consumer behaviour around digital content in a much better way. If Facebook shares some of the consumer insights on Indian users and Jio shares that of all its users, both the parties can have a huge understanding of how the larger part of India is consuming content.

    “From a media and entertainment perspective, the combined force will carry the potential. However, a lot would depend on the content creation and sharing strategies between the two. With extended reach into the hinterland and rural segments, Facebook will have the opportunity to provide extended services around short-form video creation like TikTok and end the monopoly in that segment. I do expect sports streaming to become a strategic focus for the combined force in times to come. All this leading to higher time share on FB platforms could also help them with a few incremental points gain in the digital advertising market share,” Kalra says.

    Data sharing concerns?

    With the massive extraordinary user base, both the parties have access to huge data which has created a concern in the ecosystem. One of the legal experts in the M&E sector says it's important to evaluate the conditions of data sharing, given Facebook’s tainted record, especially in the recent past with regard to data privacy and sharing. Considerably, India is yet to finalise a data protection law. He also adds that the unfair advantage of data sharing may throw more challenges to competitors. However, according to media reports, both the parties emphasised that there would be no data sharing.