In a bid to turn to its Indian offline retailers using smarter digital marketing, South Korean smartphone brand Samsung on Thursday inked a deal with US-based social networking giant Facebook in light of the COVID-19 situation.
In its first stage, the new partnership will help more than 800 retailers establish their digital presence with business pages and profiles in Facebook’s family of apps that includes – instant messaging app WhatsApp and photo-messaging app Instagram, that have over 400 million and 88 million users in India, making the country one of Facebook’s biggest national markets.
The offline Samsung device vendors would also be trained to market their products using Facebook’s main app and on its Messenger as well. While buyers will be able to discuss about devices on apps they use on a daily basis, retailers will also be able to facilitate home deliveries.
Before Samsung, Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Indian business tycoon Mukesh Ambani-led telco Reliance Jio. The hefty investment in the Indian telco came briefly after Jio launched its new online marketplace called “JioMart”, which would work with Facebook apps and enable 30 million local grocery vendors to switch to digital transactions in India.
Apart from Facebook, earlier in January, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos visited India and announced an investment of $1 billion focused on digitally empowering small and medium-sized businesses in India.