As part of the new initiatives of Reliance, the retail arm of the group has taken the initial steps towards the e-commerce industry. Well, Reliance Retail has launched a new website to deliver fresh grocery products in select surroundings of Mumbai.
The website, RelianceFreshDirect.com will start selling fruits, vegetables, groceries, packaged food, diary products, personal care products and confectionary items. Initially, the website will be catering to the residents of South Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and parts of Thane. The products available in the website will be similar to those that are available in the Reliance Mart and Reliance Fresh stores.
According to a Reliance spokesperson, the firm will continue to explore newer markets and channels in order to establish a solid foundation. The RelianceFreshDirect.com will add the direct delivery channel to the network of Reliance that will provide convenience for the valued consumers.
The venture of Reliance operates through a subsidiary and it will follow a pilot project at theRelianceCorporateParkoffice in Navi Mumbai. The company has been involved in delivering through the Reliance Fresh Project Direct website to around 10,000 employees for the past year. It delivers products to the customers either via its distribution channels or the nearest Reliance store.
Reliance is yet to reveal when this home delivery service will be made available to the other cities across the country. In terms of groceries delivery, RelianceFreshDirect.com will be a great competitor to the others that already exist in the country such as bigbasket.com and localbanya.com that are also involved in delivering fresh products to the consumers in few other cities.
As per the consultancy firm, Technopak Advisors, the e-commerce market inIndiais dominated heavily by travel related services. This particular segment is worth $10 billion for now and it is expected to reach a milestone of $200 billion by the year 2020. Furthermore, the firm has predicted that online retailing that is worth $600 million per year now will be reaching to $70 billion by 2020.
