Future Plans and Growth Prospects of Reliance Retail: Often when we hear of Reliance, their petrochemical and telecommunication arms come to mind. Their retail segment which is in progress to be a powerhouse is often overlooked.
In this article, we focus on understanding the sheer size of Reliance Retail and its plans for the future. Keep reading to find out.
Table of Contents
How big is Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail?
Reliance Retail is the retail arm of Reliance Industries. It is a subsidiary of Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd which is further held by Reliance Industries Limited.
Reliance Industries is controlled by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, and participates in various industries like telecommunications, energy, and manufacturing too.
The company was already India’s largest retailer with over 12,711 stores across the country. The company has further enhanced its position as India’s largest by acquiring the Future Group for $3.4 billion. This deal has increased the Reliance Retail store count to 14,000.
Last year Reliance Retail received a footfall of 640 million people. The Future Group on the other hand will add another 351 million footfalls to this number.
In addition to this Reliance is India’s most profitable retailer and the fastest-growing retailer in the world.
Reliance Retail has a strong presence in Food, Grocery, Consumer electronics, and the Fashion and Lifestyle segments. Its food and grocery segment is sold under the Reliance Fresh, Reliance Smart, and Reliance Market.
Consumer electronics are sold under Reliance Digital Jio stores. And the Fashion and lifestyle segment is sold under Reliance Trends, Project Eve, Reliance Footwear, Reliance Jewels, and AJIO brands.
Currently, consumer electronics make up 61% of the retail revenue. But Grocery which makes up only 8% of the retail revenue is its fastest-growing segment along with fashion.
What are Reliance’s future plans for its Retail Segment?
Reliance has been stepping up its efforts to gain every edge it possibly can to strengthen its retail segment.
Earlier last year Reliance set out on a fundraising spree for its retail expansion plans. These included international tech giants like Whatsapp and Google too. Here are some of Reliance future plans –
1. JioMart
Launched last year, JioMart is Reliance’s eCommerce platform for groceries and other FMCG goods. The existing penetration of the company throughout India has been a boost to it when it opened up JioMart with 800 stores.
Despite being a newcomer, JioMart has already set performance standards. It has successfully ensured that 90% of all online orders were completed within 6 hours. In addition to this, they also have maintained an 80% customer retention rate.
The Indian online market is expected to be worth $85.3 billion by 2024. Although groceries form a small portion of this, Reliance has set its targets to sell half of all online groceries in India.
In addition to this, the acquisition of Future group will provide a huge boost to its online groceries segment. The existing brick-and-mortar stores will be used as distribution centres.
Big Bazaar is a chain of supermarkets owned by Future group that has 1500 supermarkets and fashion outlets across 400 cities with over 70,000 employees.
2. Strengthening and Horizontal Expansion
Apart from groceries, another segment Reliance is looking to capitalize on is the fashion segment. The company already has a variety of products being sold under Trends and AJIO.
To add to its fashion portfolio the company also recently acquired Zivame. In addition to this Reliance also aims at expanding its electronic segment. For this, the company has relaunched brands like Kelvinator, BPL, and other Walt Disney and Marvel co-branded products.
The company plans to introduce new private label brands while scaling up its existing brand portfolio. Apart from these the company also has recently acquired an online furniture store – Urban Ladder furthering its online retail footprint
3. Pharmaceuticals
Online Pharma is yet another segment that Reliance is entering. In order to achieve this Reliance recently acquired Netmeds. They have opened 114 physical pharmacies at Reliance Retail stores so far.
Road Blocks for Reliance’s Future
Ecommerce MNC’s have identified the potential that the Indian markets hold. These include two American giants Walmart and Amazon which have already bet big on the Indian markets.
However, a legal battle currently exists between the world’s and India’s richest men over the Future group to get any edge necessary over the other.
Amazon had earlier invested $200 million into one of Future groups subsidiaries for its plans to assist the Future group. However, while they were structuring a deal for Future, Reliance swooped in and bought Future for $3.4 billion. This led to legal proceedings being fought in Singapore in an attempt from Amazon to stop the deal.
Despite the legal proceedings still ongoing in Indian courts, Reliance already seems to be the clear winner. Reliance products have already found a place on the shelves of Big Bazaar.
In addition to this, the Future workforce is already undergoing training to work under Reliance retail.
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Closing Thoughts
As we have seen above from Reliance’s plans it is clear that they have identified that the future is online. The company has taken several steps to capitalize on this aspect.
In addition to this, the government’s campaigns and actions in ensuring that Indian companies are looked into favourably over their foreign counterparts have further boosted their plans. The companies are now competing aggressively for every edge but with aims of seizing the market in long run over the next decade.
That’s all for this post. Let us know what you think about Reliance Retail capability to compete with the likes of Amazon and Walmarts Flipkart in the comments below. Happy Reading!
Aron, Bachelors in Commerce from Mangalore University, entered the world of Equity research to explore his interests in financial markets. Outside of work, you can catch him binging on a show, supporting RCB, and dreaming of visiting Kasol soon. He also believes that eating kid’s ice-cream is the best way to teach them taxes.
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