Reliance to Compete with the Retail Leaders Amazon and Flipkart
The increasing scope of business growth in the online sector has encouraged India’s successful organization Reliance Retail Ltd (RRL) to enter the segment and compete with the online industry leaders including Amazon and Flipkart. Amazon is one of the pioneers and leader internationally while Flipkart has been taken over by retail giant Walmart some time back. Today RRL – is the largest retailer in the country. The company is eying endless and fast growth in the online sector and has so planned some of the big ventures. The company is sure to give a very strong competition in the e-commerce sector.
The richest man of Asia is planning to give Jeff Bezos of Amazon a run on the financial backgrounds. The chairman of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, is about to launch his own e-commerce platform. This platform of Reliance Retail would compete with leading brands Amazon as well as Walmart’s Flipkart in India. One of the most powerful companies situated in India is Reliance and now, growing its retail presence across all the corners of India where a market is conquered by neighborhood grocery stores.
According to the sources, the motive of RRL is to establish an online platform for all the offline merchants and stores to sell their products online to the consumers of India. Well, this platform is quite similar to the “Alibaba” which is an online marketplace. The set-up of marketplace is still going on and it is not named yet. As the internet users are growing to five hundred million, e-commerce is also expanding by thirty per cent every year. As per the estimates by Morgan Stanley, the opportunity for online retail in India is grown up to $200 billion by 2027.
Through it mobile broadband unit, Reliance Jio, the group is already having access to vast consumers. It decreases the cost of internet broadband for getting more number of Indians online.
Dinesh Moorjani of Comcast Ventures told, “A cheap mobile broadband service introduced by Reliance about two years ago. It created an environment where every person started using the internet on the go and got addicted to the same.”
Jio is adopted by everyone from blue-collared workers to the corporate executives. New guidelines for e-commerce sector has also been issued by the Indian government earlier this year. Both of the companies, Amazon and Walmart, have originated from the United States and have been fighting for market share in the growing Indian market. More job opportunities have been created by Amazon especially in India as compared to any other nation.
“More protectionist policies, localization of data and preferential treatment towards the domestic companies throughout the last nine months” as stated by Nisha Biswal, president of the United States-India Business Council. The trend is quite challenging.
One of the largest players in the e-commerce industry in India is Amazon and presently, it faces the risk related to frequent regulatory changes. It is impossible for ample number of technology companies to expand their business in China due to prevailing policies and India is a nation where they are expecting to win more. Amazon tried to enter China but Alibaba got the victory. So, India is a huge bet for Amazon. But e-commerce is not an easy market to achieve the target, not for overseas players.
A large number of Indians residing in big cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai are buying most of the goods through online retail platforms. Ten thousand retail stores are hoping to tie-up with Reliance industries in six thousand cities and cater to the Jio subscribers of about three hundred million to arrive at the masses. The next step of Reliance Industries is to move into the sector of e-commerce and to take the advantage of consumer base. This is the massive project for Asia’s richest man and it is expecting to be less costly for Indians.
Reliance Retail Ltd. (RRL) has its own success story. Nothing is impossible for the group as the company under the leadership of the successful businessman Mukesh Ambani is already doing better in the retail sector as well. As per the information from the reliable sources, RRL currently operates through its three major divisions – (i) grocery, (ii) consumer electronics, and (iii) fashion and lifestyle. If we talk about its grocery segment, the company functions using the three key systems – (i) neighbourhood stores (Reliance Fresh), (ii) supermarkets (Reliance SMART) and (iii) wholesale/ B2B cash & carry stores (Reliance Market). It also runs its dedicated grocery online shopping platform by the brand name RelianceSMART.in accessible 24×7. It has lately introduced a new concept of store by the name Qwik Mart which is a convenience store co-located with the outlet of Reliance Fuel stations.
Reliance Retail Limited is also the leading organized retailers in India in the segment of consumer durables and information technology today. This segment runs eight thousand stores across the nation through ResQ service centers (full-fledged service arm), Jio Stores/Jio Points (Smaller stores facilitating sale of Jio services, mobility and connectivity products) and Reliance Digital Stores (Big-box Consumer Electronics store).
In addition to the above, RRL also sells its own demanding branded products under the popular brand including Enzo, RelGlow, Best Farms, Kaffe, Mopz, Expelz, Home One, Graphite, Good Life, Masti Oye and more.
Thus, it is difficult to stop RRL from achieving its unbeatable niche in the online segment over the time. It will certainly give a strong challenge to Walmart owned Flipkart and Amazon in India.
