Reliance Retail, who have recently step into the online sales of smartphones and electronic appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and televisions with the launch of their new online platform. Smart phones and electronics sales which account for 55 to 60 % of the business in e-commerce have been dominated by Amazon and Flipkart. Reliance Digital plans to rival them using their offline store and smaller Jio stores as fulfilment centres for the online orders and.Reliance Retail has now an incredible reach across more than 5,200 towns and cities, with 8,533 stores.
“The commercial operation has just been launched across India. While this is an omnichannel expansion of Reliance Digital, there will be a dedicated focus on making the online operation successful,” an industry executive was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.Reliance has identified four key pillars to achieve its expansion plans and that includes — augmenting geographical reach, innovating newer store concepts and channels, enhancing customer experience and leveraging technology.
Recently, Reliance Retail reported an over three-fold jump in pre-tax profit of Rs 1,069 crore for the first-quarter ended 30 June, 2018. Revenue from RIL’s organised retail segment during last quarter grew over two-fold to Rs 25,890 crore as against Rs 11,571 crore from the last quarter.
It became the first Indian company to enter the world’s top 200 retail chains to cross $10 billion in sales and rapidly continues to expand in new cities.
In late March, it was reported that Reliance Retail were aiming to raise Rs 4,000 crore via a rights issue to fund their expansion plans. The move is widely seen as the company’s attempt to beat competition from global giants Amazon and Walmart. While a fund raise would help them offer deep discounts and expand their online services, how Amazon and Flipkart cope up with a major emerging competitor would be worthwhile to see.
