Reliance Industries is on a roll lately. While the entire economy is facing the heat of the pandemic, this one entity is rising well beyond expectations.
Reliance has made some major strides in digitizing India through their Jio platforms but there’s another major area that Reliance is looking to disrupt – the retail sector. Their annual reports state their retail vertical sold about 160 million in garments, a massive 2.6 billion units of grocery, and 200 million in electronic units among various others in the last financial year alone.
Reliance retail also happens to be the largest retail chain in India as well and recent tie-ups with WhatsApp to extend their lead further is a testament to the never-ending urge to dominate the entire Indian market by Mukesh Ambani. Reliance is also considering buying out Future Retail’s stores which would add another 1,500 outlets to their already massive 11,800 stores all across India selling anything and everything from grocery, electronics, apparel, and so on. They employ approximately 1.4 lakh people.
Even though the economy has been on a downward trajectory, Reliance Retail still managed to post 2062 crores in operating profit which is up by 19.8% from last year’s same quarter. Consumer electronics covers almost 61% of the total retail revenue alone. It holds over 8100 Jio stores to date. They are not only selling their tech but also utilizing it to massively boost their business as well.
Reliance is working hard on its JioMart platform which helps connect the offline world of Kirana stores online. Their main intention is to serve its customers with traditional retailers. This is a win-win situation for all the parties involved. A lot of careful thinking and execution are needed to pull this huge venture off the ground. The recent tie-up with WhatsApp will help cement the growth of JioMart through its wide reach (the recent 5.7-billion-dollar investment from Facebook helped make this tie-up)
RIL is also making some major investments in the fields of AI, cloud, education, robotics, etc. They have also made moves to penetrate tier 3 and 4 towns through a concept called Trends Small Town.
Reliance is expected to play a major role in the overall development of the country and this has been spotted by many major foreign players who have recently injected billions into the company.
