India’s Tata Group is reportedly looking to roll out a ‘super-app’ that will pit it against rivals, including Amazon AMZN,
and billionaire Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries, in one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world.
The new digital platform, which will launch in India in December and January, will bring Tata’s various consumer businesses under one channel, providing health care, food and grocery ordering, and insurance and financial services among others, according to the Financial Times. .
“It’s going to be a super-app, a lot of apps in apps and so on … We have a very big opportunity,” said Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, the $ 113 billion Tata Group holding company, told the FT .
So-called super-apps – like Meituan Dianping 3690, multi-service platform,
and Tencent’s 700,
WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide – are one-stop-shops where users can access a variety of approved third-party services, such as ordering food delivery, paying bills or submitting a booth.
Although they have grown rapidly in emerging markets such as China and Southeast Asia, they still need to gain traction in India as well as the West.
To read:Jio Platforms of India is emerging as a Tech star. Google and Facebook are betting on it.
In April, Facebook FB,
$ 5.7 billion spent on a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Reliance Industries RELIANCE,
The move was designed to bring India’s 400 million WhatsApp users into closer partnership with hundreds of millions of groceries and small businesses in India.
Three months later, Google parent Alphabet GOOG,
invested $ 4.5 billion for a 7.7% stake in Jio.
Tata, which is also Tata Motors TTM,
and its luxury car units Jaguar Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus (formerly known as British Steel), have fallen behind rivals on their supply of internet to consumers.
“The Tata Group, depending on how you count, affects hundreds of millions of consumers in India, if you take consumers who walk into a Tata facility every day,” Chandrasekaran told the FT.
.
