Author: azeeadmin

Thanks to smartphones and their downsized keyboards, autocomplete has become a nearly ubiquitous feature of how we write these days. To save us precious seconds composing and (at least in my fat-thumbed case) correcting words, our keyboards now prompt us with suggestions of what we’re trying to write to get the job done a little bit more easily. But email and messaging composing isn’t the only area where artificial intelligence and semantic analytics are being used in this way. Today, a startup that has built a platform that applies the concept to the world of coding is announcing a round of funding to expand its business.

Codota, an Israeli startup that provides an AI tool to developers to let them autocomplete strings of code that they are writing — intended both to speed up their work (it claims to “boost productivity by 25%”) and to make sure that it’s using the right syntax and ‘spelled’ correctly — has picked up $12 million, a Series A led by e.ventures, with participation also from previous backer Khosla Ventures, along with new investors TPY Capital and Hetz Ventures. The company has now raised $16 million in total, and it’s not disclosing its valuation.

The funding comes on the heels of Codota acquiring one of its bigger competitors, TabNine, out of Canada, late last year (announced only in March however) to expand the number of languages that it can support. It now says it supports all major languages, including Python, JavaScript, Java, C, and HTML; and it operates across a major integrated development environments such as VSCode, Eclipse, and IntelliJ.

The funding will be used to expand its reach into that existing range further, as well as to bring on more customers. Today, the list of those that are already using Codota’s tools is impressive. It includes developers from companies like Google and Amazon, as well as Netflix, Alibaba, Airbnb and Atlassian, amongst many others. It says its user base has grown more than 1,000% in the last year, number over 1 million developers using it monthly.

The funding news coincides with Codota launching a new version of its autocompletion for JavaScript that merges Codota’s semantic technology with TabNine’s textual tech.

The first two names in the customer list above list are particularly surprising, but they underscore what Codota has focused on and seems to be doing right. These two tech giants are AI powerhouses in their own rights; both build and ship formidable sets of tools for developers; and Google specifically is one of the names most synonymous with autocomplete by way of the tools it’s built for Gmail.

The reason Codota — which was founded in 2015 — has had traction, said co-founder and CTO Eran Yahav, is because in fact coding has been a tough nut to crack for semantics teams, despite their advances in other languages.

“Up until a couple of years ago it wasn’t feasible,” he said, noting that four streams of technology are coming together when building auto-completion for coding: high-quality open source code availability to feed the algorithms; advances in semantic analysis to extract insights at scale; machine learning advances that essentially bring ML costs down; and computational resources to run everything in the cloud to make it something everyone can use everywhere. With open source really booming, and everything else coming along, it’s been a perfect storm that Codota has seized, even as others are working on this too.

“Others have done this with varying degrees of success,” Dror Weiss, the other co-founder and CEO said. “I’m guessing and also know that others are doing the same.” Others include the likes of Kite, Ubisoft and Mozilla, and a number of others.

One aspect that Codota has been building that is particularly timely now is the ability not just to provide more precise coding assistance to developers, but to “learn” what is best practice in a particular environment or workplace (it offers both individual and enterprise tiers, and it’s the latter that provides this feature). This can be useful in any situation, but particularly today when developers are working at home and on their own, giving them instant help as if they were physically in the same space.

Notably, while so much AI seems bent on the idea of autonomous systems, Weiss said emphatically that this is not the intention short or even long-term.

“I don’t think we would be able to replace developers and I don’t think we would want to,” he said. “Our aim is to take the mundane and repetitive aspects and do that for them.” In that respect not unlike RPA in back-office functions. “It’s not high value to remember the syntax and the best practice. And even if you have smart compose [in consumer services] it may suggest sentences but can’t read your mind and tell you how you want to respond. So it’s very unlikely to replace you and respond how you would want to. That’s not even in our longest-term plan.”

e.ventures last year announced a $400 million fund for early-stage investments, and this seems to be coming out of that. With this round, the firm’s general partner Tom Gieselmann is joining the board.

“I’ve been following the developer tools market for over 20 years and believe Codota has distinguished itself as the dominant player in terms of community, product, and technology,” he said in a statement. “We are proud to support Dror and Eran on their mission to transform software development and make coding easier and more efficient for individual developers and teams within the enterprise.”

Germany has U-turned on building a centralized COVID-19 contacts tracing app — and will instead adopt a decentralized architecture, Reuters reported Sunday, citing a joint statement by chancellery minister Helge Braun and health minister Jens Spahn.

In Europe in recent weeks, a battle has raged between different groups backing centralized vs decentralized infrastructure for apps being fast-tracked by governments which will use Bluetooth-based smartphone proximity as a proxy for infection risk — in the hopes of supporting the public health response to the coronavirus by automating some contacts tracing.

Centralized approaches that have been proposed in the region would see pseudonymized proximity data stored and processed on a server controlled by a national authority, such as a healthcare service. However concerns have been raised about allowing authorities to scoop up citizens’ social graph, with privacy experts warning of the risk of function creep and even state surveillance.

Decentralized contacts tracing infrastructure, by contrast, means ephemeral IDs are stored locally on device — and only uploaded with a user’s permission after a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis. A relay server is used to broadcast infected IDs — enabling devices to locally compute if there’s a risk that requires notification. So social graph data is not centralized.

The change of tack by the German government marks a major blow to a homegrown standardization effort, called PEPP-PT, that had been aggressively backing centralization — while claiming to ‘preserve privacy’ on account of not tracking location data. It quickly scrambled to propose a centralized architecture for tracking coronavirus contacts, led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, and claiming the German government as a major early backer, despite PEPP-PT later saying it would support decentralized protocols too.

As we reported earlier, the effort faced strident criticism from European privacy experts — including a group of academics developing a decentralized protocol called DP-3T — who argue p2p architecture is truly privacy preserving. Concerns were also raised about a lack of transparency around who is behind PEPP-PT and the protocols they claimed to support, with no code published for review.

The European Commission, meanwhile, has also recommended the use of decentralization technologies to help boost trust in such apps in order to encourage wider adoption.

EU parliamentarians have also warned regional governments against trying to centralize proximity data during the coronavirus crisis.

But it was Apple and Google jumping into the fray earlier this month by announcing joint support for decentralized contacts tracing that was the bigger blow — with no prospect of platform-level technical restrictions being lifted. iOS limits background access to Bluetooth for privacy and security reasons, so national apps that do not meet this decentralized standard won’t benefit from API support — and will likely be far less usable, draining battery and functioning only if actively running.

Nonetheless PEPP-PT told journalists just over a week ago that it was engaged in fruitful discussions with Apple and Google about making changes to their approach to accommodate centralized protocols.

Notably, the tech giants never confirmed that claim. They have only since doubled down on the principle of decentralization for the cross-platform API for public health apps — and system-wide contacts tracing which is due to launch next month.

At the time of writing PEPP-PT’s spokesman, Hans-Christian Boos, had not responded to a request for comment on the German government withdrawing support.

Boos previously claimed PEPP-PT had around 40 governments lining up to join the standard. However in recent days the momentum in Europe has been going in the other direction. A number of academic institutions that had initially backed PEPP-PT have also withdrawn support.

In a statement emailed to TechCrunch, the DP-3T project welcomed Germany’s U-turn.

“DP-3T is very happy to see that Germany is adopting a decentralized approach to contact tracing and we look forward to its next steps implementing such a technique in a privacy preserving manner,” the group told us.

Berlin’s withdrawal leaves France and the UK the two main regional backers of centralized apps for coronavirus contacts tracing. And while the German U-turn is certainly a hammer blow for the centralized camp in Europe the French government appears solid in its support — at least for now.

France has been developing a centralized coronavirus contacts tracing protocol, called ROBERT, working with Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute and others.

In an opinion issued Sunday, France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, did not take active issue with centralizing pseudonymized proximity IDs — saying EU law does not in principle forbid such a system — although the watchdog emphasized the need to minimize the risk of individuals being re-identified.

It’s notable that France’s digital minister, Cédric O, has been applying high profile public pressure to Apple over Bluetooth restrictions — telling Bloomberg last week that Apple’s policy is a blocker to the virus tracker.

Yesterday O was also tweeting to defend the utility of the planned ‘Stop Covid’ app.

We reached out to France’s digital ministry for comment on Germany’s decision to switch to a decentralized approach but at the time of writing the department had not responded.

In a press release today the government highlights the CNIL view that its approach is compliant with data protection rules, and commits to publishing a data protection impact assessment ahead of launching the app.

If France presses ahead it’s not clear how the country will avoid its app being ignored or abandoned by smartphone users who find it irritating to use. (Although it’s worth noting that Google’s Android platform has a substantial marketshare in the market, with circa 80% vs 20% for iOS, per Kantar.)

A debate in the French parliament tomorrow is due to include discussion of contacts tracing apps.

We’ve also reached out to the UK’s NHSX — which has been developing a COVID-19 contacts tracing app for the UK market — and will update this report with any response.

In a blog post Friday the UK public healthcare unit’s digital transformation division said it’s “working with Apple and Google on their welcome support for tracing apps around the world”, a PR line that entirely sidesteps the controversy around centralized vs decentralized app infrastructures.

The UK has previously been reported to be planning to centralize proximity data — raising questions about the efficacy of its planned app too, given iOS restrictions on background access to Bluetooth.

“As part of our commitment to transparency, we will be publishing the key security and privacy designs alongside the source code so privacy experts can ‘look under the bonnet’ and help us ensure the security is absolutely world class,” the NHSX’s Matthew Gould and Dr Geraint Lewis added in the statement.

Several French VC firms want to remain available to support the tech ecosystem at large during the lockdown with virtual office hours. If you’re a startup and you’re currently struggling, chances are you’re having a lot of discussions with your investors.

But if you’ve only raised from business angels who don’t necessarily have a lot of time on their hands, you don’t necessarily have the right support framework around you. Even if you have a VC firm on your capitalization table, they may have more urgent cases right now.

Named VC Hours, the program is quite simple. Any startup can go to the dedicated Calendly account and request a meeting with a VC firm. You then get to talk with an investor for 30 minutes over the phone or on a video call.

The service is free and the VC firms behind VC Hours promise that all information will remain confidential. Of course, it’s going to be hard for investors to forget those past conversations when some of those startups are going to pitch to raise some money later down the road. So maybe don’t share all your secrets.

But if you want some advice on runway, cashflow and fundraising pace, those meetings could be particularly useful. Breega originally put VC Hours together, and here’s the list of VC firms:

• Aster
• Axeleo
• Blackfin tech
• Breega
• Caphorn
• Daphni
• Demeter
• Elaia
• Eutopia
• IDInvest
• Iris Capital
• Kerala
• Omnes Capital
• Samaipata
• Starquest
• Ventech
• Raise Ventures

More personnel moves at Atomico. The European VC firm, founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, has recruited Sasha Astafyeva as its new consumer-focused partner, and former-Googler Terese Hougaard as principal.

Sasha Astafyeva (pictured left) previously spent three years as a principal at Felix Capital. In her new role as partner, she’ll be leading “sourcing, due diligence, and management” of Atomico -backed consumer tech companies.

Prior to VC, Astafyeva, who is originally from Ukraine, held the role of Head of Business Intelligence and Strategy at Lyst, the London-based online fashion marketplace. She has also worked at VivaReal, an online real estate marketplace in Brazil, as the company’s VP of Finance and Business Intelligence. In addition, the newly recruited Atomico partner did a stint at Dafiti, the Latin American online fashion company.

“I’m very excited to join the team and help lead our consumer-focused efforts,” Astafyeva tells TechCrunch. “It is absolutely an interesting time to join as we find ourselves in a world with highly elevated levels of uncertainty, tremendous economic hardships across the world and varying, and often fast-changing, responses of countries to this new reality. I think that we are only seeing the beginning of this and time will tell what our new reality will look like”.

Meanwhile, new Atomico principal Terese Hougaard (pictured right) joins from CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund based in Mountain View. Originally from Denmark, Terese spent five years at Alphabet and partnered with companies like Stripe, Robinhood, Gusto, and UiPath.

Prior to that, she worked in London in Google’s SMB marketing organisation, in addition to holding roles in internal strategy and e-commerce business development at the London and New York offices of American Express.

Being a supply chain merchant often means cobbling together different ways of keeping in touch with buyers, including emails, text messages and paper invoices. Tinvio wants to simplify the process with a communication and commerce platform designed especially for managing orders.

The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised $5.5 million in seed funding, led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge early-stage accelerator program, with participation from Global Founders Capital and Partech Partners.

Along with a pre-seed round from Rocket Internet, this brings Tinvio’s total raised so far to $6.5 million. The startup was founded in July 2019 by Ajay Gopal, who previously worked at Rocket Internet in Berlin. Before that, he was a fintech investment banker at Credit Suisse.

Since launching, Tinvio’s customer base has grown to over 1,000 businesses in more than 10 cities. Over the next 12 months, it plans to add more cities and languages, as well as digital financial services.

Tinvio is targeted at small-to mid-sized merchants, and many of its customers are in the food and beverage (F&B), retail and healthcare supply industries.

“At its core, Tinvio is a real-time messaging app. For every 10 orders placed on Tinvio, there’s an average of two messages sent, reinforcing that communication is critical in fragmented supply chains,” Gopal told TechCrunch.

One of Tinvio’s selling points is that merchants can continue to receive orders through their existing channels, including email, SMS or WhatsApp. By consolidating those orders in one app, Tinvio is also able to create a real-time digital ledger, making it easier for merchants to track invoices, fulfillment and finances.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, order volumes between merchants and suppliers on Tinvio have fallen about 30% to 50% in most cities, Gopal said, “though retention rates remain high, suggesting that many businesses are trying their best to stay open. We talk to them often, and we’re quite awed by their resilience to keep trying, keep finding a way to make it work.”

He added, “Our tech is designed to be fully customizable, so we’ve started organically supporting many of their new use cases.”

For example, some food and beverage merchants have started using Tinvio to manage group orders with consumers instead. Since many businesses have let go of staff, this means merchants have become more reliant on the app to keep track of orders and inbound/outbound deliveries. Tinvio has started expanding this into a new feature and also begun customizing soft-integrations for suppliers so they don’t have to manually add data to their ERP software.

Two weeks ago, Tinvio also launched a project called Save Our Nomnoms to help direct more orders to food and beverage merchants in Singapore, which is currently under partial lockdown. The project started with 40 brands, and has since grown to include more than 300 brands.

A new Nigerian fintech venture, Okra, has racked up a unique mix of accomplishments in less than a year.

The Lagos based API developer created a product that generates revenues from both payment startups and established financial institutions.

Okra has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from TLcom Capital — a $71 million Africa focused VC firm that rarely invests in early-stage companies or fintech.

The startup is also poised to enter new markets and it’s hiring.

Founded in June 2019 by Nigerians Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside, Okra casts itself as a motherboard for the continent’s 21st century financial system.

“We’re building a super-connector API that…allows individuals to connect their bank accounts directly to third party applications. And that’s their African bank accounts starting in the largest market in Africa, Nigeria,” said Ashiru Jituboh.

As a sector, fintech has become the continent’s highest funded tech space, receiving the bulk of an estimated $2 billion in VC that went to African startups in 2019. Those ventures, and a number of the continent’s established banks, are in a race to build market share through financial inclusion.

By several estimates — including The Global Findex Database — the continent is home to the largest percentage of the world’s unbanked population, with a sizable number of underbanked consumers and SMEs.

With 54 countries, 1.2 billion people and thousands of relatively young startups, there are a lot of moving parts in Africa’s fintech space. Similar to U.S. company Plaid, Okra is shaping a platform that connects accounts and financial data to banking apps into a revenue generating product.

With Africa’s largest population of 200 million people, Nigeria serves as a major financial hub — but there’s still a disconnect between fintech apps and banks, according to Okra’s Ashiru Jituboh.

“Here in this market there’s no way to directly connect your bank account through an API or directly to an application,” she said.

Okra offers several paid packages for those types of integrations and opens up the code to its five product categories —  authorization, balance, transactions, identity and accounts — to developers.

Okra has already created a diverse client list that includes mobile payments startup PalmPay, insurer Axa Mansard and Nigerian digital lender Renmoney.

The startup generates revenues through product fees and earns each time a user connects a bank account to a customer, according to Ashiru Jituboh.

On how the Okra differs from other well-funded fintech companies in Nigeria, such as Flutterwave or Interswitch, “The answer is we’re not doing payments, but what we’re doing is making processes with [payment providers] even smoother,” she said.

Ashiru Jituboh comes to her CEO position with a software engineering background and a strong connection to the U.S. Born in Nigeria, she grew up in and studied computer science in North Carolina.

She did stints in finance — JP Morgan Chase and Fidelity Investments — and then in tech companies before making the leap to founder. “I went to work in startups, but I was always employee number two or three,” said Ashiru Jituboh.

She decided to go all in on Okra after returning to Nigeria and noting the need for linking together the country’s emerging digital financial infrastructure.

“When we knew that it was a big addressable market is when we realized that all these fintech CEOs and CTOs were struggling with this use case,” she said.

Shortly after its launch, Okra attracted the attention of TLcom Capital in second quarter 2019, according to VC Andreata Muforo.

With offices in London, Lagos, and Nairobi, the group closed its $71 million Tide Africa fund this year. TLcom has focused primarily on Series A and later investments, including backing Kenyan agtech startup Twiga Foods and Nigerian trucking logistics company Kobo360.

In an interview last year, the fund’s managing partner, Maurizio Caio, explained that TLcom was steering more toward investments in infrastructure oriented tech companies and away from Africa’s more commoditized payments and lending startups.

The VC firm was attracted to Okra for its ability to serve the continent’s broader financial sector. “It’s a service that other fintechs can plug into and utilize, so it’s accelerating the growth of fintech across the continent…That to us was a big hook,” TLcom’s Andreata Muforo told TechCrunch on a call.

Founder Fara Ashiru Jituboh was also a factor in the fund making a $1 million pre-seed investment in Okra. “We found her to be very strong and also liked the fact that she’s a technical founder,” said Muforo. As part of the investments, she and TLcom Capital partner Ido Sum will join Okra’s board.

In addition to hiring fresh engineering talent, the startup aims to take its product offerings that connect bank accounts to apps to new African countries — though it would not disclose where or when.

“We’re looking at three target markets that our clients are already in,” said Ashiru Jituboh. Okra investor Andreata Muforo named Kenya — with one of the highest mobile money penetration rates in the world — as a likely candidate for the startup’s product services.

WhatsApp’s bid on cutting virality of messages circulating on its platform by introducing an additional limit earlier this month has already started to pay off.

The Facebook -owned service said on Monday that virality of “highly forwarded” messages sent on WhatsApp had dropped by 70% globally in weeks after introducing a new restriction earlier this month.

In one of the biggest changes to its core feature, WhatsApp said earlier this month that users on its platform can now send along frequently forwarded messages they receive to only one person or a group at a time, down from five. The restriction was rolled out globally to WhatsApp’s 2 billion users on April 7.

“We recently introduced a limit to sharing ‘highly forwarded messages’ to just one chat. Since putting into place this new limit, globally there has been a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages sent on WhatsApp,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.

WhatsApp first introduced a similar limit in 2018, when it restricted users from forwarding a message to more than five people or groups at once. While announcing the new limit earlier this month, WhatsApp said message forwards on its platform had dropped by 25% globally in two years.

“This change is helping keep WhatsApp a place for personal and private conversations. WhatsApp is committed to doing our part to tackle viral messages,” the spokesperson said today.

The cut down on forwards should help WhatsApp assuage the scrutiny it is receiving in many countries, including India, its biggest market.

New Delhi asked WhatsApp and other messaging and social media firms last month to do more to control the viral hoaxes circulating on their platforms about coronavirus infection. This is the latest of several similar advisories India has sent to social media firms operating in the country,

WhatsApp said earlier this month that it had seen a “significant” surge in the “amount of forwarding” in recent weeks that “users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation.”

In recent weeks, several users in India have circulated messages, often in good faith, that claimed that treatments had been found to battle coronavirus infection and that there were scientific explanations to back some of the community measures New Delhi had enforced such as asking people to make noise for five minutes or lighting candles and oil-lamps. Fact checkers said that none of these claims were factual.

WhatsApp and its parent firm, Facebook, have taken several efforts in recent months to help governments in many countries, including India, reach their citizens and share authoritative information about the coronavirus pandemic.

French startup Shine is adding a new option today. If you think there’s a chance that a client is not going to pay your next invoice, you can insure that invoice to avoid any bad surprise.

Shine is building a challenger bank for freelancers and small companies. It lets you send and receive money in a separate business account, pay with a MasterCard, create invoices and stay on top of administrative tasks.

It also helps you get started as the startup can fill out all administrative paperwork to register yourself as a freelancer. You also get notifications to remind you that you should pay your taxes and more. Starting accepting freelancing jobs can be confusing and Shine can help you with that.

Shine has a built-in invoicing tool. It lets you add a client and generate an invoice directly in the mobile app. After that, you can send a link to your client. You get a notification when your client opens the invoice. They can download a PDF and get your bank details to pay you.

And yet, many clients often wait until the last minute to pay an invoice. It can be a month or two after finishing a job, which means that they also forget about outstanding invoices.

In a few weeks, Shine users will be able to create an invoice and insure it before sending it. It costs you 2% of your total amount on your invoice. There’s no subscription fee, it’s a one-off process.

If your client hasn’t paid you after the due date, Shine will reach out to your client again to try to get the payment. If that doesn’t work, you can file a claim with the partner insurance company.

In that case, if the company is still operating, you get paid 100% of your invoice. If the company has collapsed, you get 90% back. (Of course, that’s without taking into account the 2% fees you already paid.)

BuyMed, a Vietnamese startup that wants to fix Southeast Asia’s complex pharmaceutical distribution networks, announced today it has raised $2.5 million in pre-Series A funding. Investors include Sequoia Capital India’s Surge early-stage accelerator program, and Genesia Ventures. Returning investor Cocoon Capital also participated.

Founded in 2018, BuyMed operates Thuocsi.vn, a pharmaceutical distribution platform in Vietnam. Over the past 12 months, the company says it has tripled its annual revenue, and now plans to add new product lines, including cosmetics, medical devices, supplements and medical services, with the goal of becoming a “one-stop marketplace” for supplies needed by healthcare providers in Southeast Asia.

BuyMed verifies suppliers on its platform, improving safety and reducing the risk of medications making its way into the grey market (or unofficial distribution channels). The startup currently has 700 verified suppliers, distributors and manufacturers on its platform, who serve over 7,000 healthcare providers.

In a press statement, Genesia Ventures general partner Takahiro Suzuki, said, “There is still a tremendous opportunity for growth and improvement in Vietnam’s pharmaceutical supply chain and we believe that BuyMed’s founders have the experience, execution and operational management necessary to tackle this problem.”

BuyMed Co-founder and CEO Peter Nguyen formerly served as a consultant for companies like Eli Lilly, Roche and Siemens, helping them create more efficient operations and supply chains.

Nguyen told TechCrunch that there are no major multi-brand distributors in Vietnam, so most pharmaceutical manufacturers and brands need to set up their own networks. This means the process of getting medications and other pharmaceutical supplies to healthcare providers is highly-fragmented.

There are roughly 200 domestic manufacturers in Vietnam, in addition to imported brands, and their products are handled by over 3,000 distributors. While about 2% of pharmacies in Vietnam are part of a franchise or chain, the vast majority are independent. This means distributors need to serve over 40,000 independent pharmacies and about 5,000 independent clinics.

Nguyen added that fragmentation is similar in many other Southeast Asian markets, giving BuyMed an opportunity to expand across the region.

Thuocsi.vn’s usage has grown over the last 60 days, as more Vietnamese pharmacies source from online channels. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, BuyMed has expanded its platform so more of its partners can sell online, and added safety measures like frequent warehouse and office sanitization and a no-contact drop-off and cash collection system.

JioMart, an e-commerce venture run by India’s most valued firm, is testing an “ordering system” on WhatsApp, giving us the first peek at the collaboration between Facebook and Indian telecom giant Reliance Jio Platforms.

Users in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, three cities in Indian state Maharashtra, can use JioMart’s WhatsApp business account for grocery shopping.

They can initiate an order by texting “Hi” to +91-8850008000, which prompts a link that opens a mini store on the browser, allowing them to pick a range of grocery products including toothpaste, snacks, tea and coffee, rice, and cooking oil.

Once an order has been placed, which currently does not include a way to pay digitally, JioMart automatically assigns a neighborhood store to them.

A source familiar with WhatsApp and JioMart’s collaboration confirmed the move, but said the ordering system is currently at the pilot stage. More than 1,200 neighborhood stores are engaging in the pilot program.

JioMart, a joint venture between Reliance Retail, India’s largest retail chain, and Reliance Jio Platform, the biggest telecom network in India with over 385 million subscribers, is ensuring “hygiene and safety of staff,” “fair prices”, round-the-clock operational warehouses, and “daily supplies to the store.”

The testing gives us an early peek at how Reliance Jio Platforms wants to leverage WhatsApp’s unparalleled reach in India, where the Facebook -owned service has amassed over 400 million users.

Last week, Facebook announced it was investing $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms to secure a 9.9% stake of the Indian firm, which like Reliance Retail, is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, the most valued firm in India.

Ajit Mohan, a Facebook VP who oversees the company’s business in India, told TechCrunch in an interview that the two companies will explore ways to collaborate.

One of those collaborations may allow users to find local stores around them on WhatsApp, talk to store operators and place orders from within the Facebook-owned instant messaging service, he said last week.

“You can browse shops and talk to the shop owner. And ultimately, where we do want to take this flow is for you to be able to place your orders,” he said, adding that there is a chance that users might not be required to pay on WhatsApp, which started to test its payments service in India two years ago.

WhatsApp has yet to receive approval from New Delhi for a nationwide rollout of Pay in India. Local media reports claimed earlier this year that WhatsApp had started to expand Pay’s reach in the country in various phases. Facebook’s Mohan said last week that only 1 million WhatsApp users in India, same as before, have access to its mobile payment service.