| Hey everyone, it's Kurt. Facebook Inc. made its largest investment in almost six years this week when it announced plans to buy about 10% of Jio Platforms, an Indian telecom company owned by Reliance Industries Ltd. The cost of Facebook's stake: $5.7 billion, more than it paid for Instagram and Oculus combined. It's a massive bet for Facebook, and an arrangement we haven't seen before from Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. He has a history of making expensive acquisitions, but does not typically make big investments in businesses he can't control. To understand why Zuckerberg made this deal, you first need to understand the opportunity in India. Of the country's more than 1.3 billion people, only about a third are monthly internet users, according to India's Economic Times. Hundreds of millions more will likely get online over the next decade. Facebook, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Google want to be there to welcome them. Facebook, though, has had a tough time establishing itself in India. An earlier plan to offer free internet services, including its own social network, was struck down by Indian regulators in 2016 for violating the concept of net neutrality. Regulators have also pushed back against end-to-end encryption offered by Facebook's WhatsApp, and the company's plans to roll out a payments feature to Indian users. But now Facebook has a partner in India, and a powerful one at that. Reliance Industries is owned by Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man. This gives Facebook a strong ally in a country where simply getting regulatory approval for its products has been a major challenge. Still, you don't spend $5.7 billion just to make a new friend, and the two sides say they're planning a number of business partnerships. The most obvious appears to involve WhatsApp, which has about 400 million users in India. Facebook wants to make WhatsApp the primary way small businesses connect with customers. Imagine messaging a customer service rep through WhatsApp instead of calling a phone number, or placing an order for movie tickets or a new pair of shoes via the messaging service. Facebook may be able to charge businesses for access to WhatsApp's 2 billion global users -- a potentially huge way to expand beyond advertising. In India, some small businesses already use WhatsApp in this way, but Facebook hopes a partnership with Jio will increase adoption and eventually make these transactions simpler. Jio owns its own e-commerce marketplace called JioMart, for example, with ambitions to rival Walmart Inc.'s Flipkart and Amazon in India. It's possible that WhatsApp could serve as an extension of that product for Indian merchants hoping to accept payments online. "The whole idea is that [small businesses] should find it easy to interact, they should be able to be in one place and do much more," Anshuman Thakur, Jio's head of strategy, said in a recent interview. Obvious questions remain, including exactly how both companies will make these product integrations work. It's also unclear why Zuckerberg needed to invest in Jio to make this happen. Facebook partners with many telecom companies – and has even worked with Jio before. It seems possible that Facebook could have developed similar arrangements without spending all that money. Ajit Mohan, Facebook's managing director for India, said it made the investment to "affirm our commitment to India and the digital sector in India." Consider that commitment well and truly affirmed.-- Kurt Wagner | 
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