Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has finally stepped into one of India’s largest consumer-facing businesses — online food and grocery market — with the soft launch of his “new commerce” venture called JioMart.
According to officials, the new venture will be an aggregator where it will partner local grocers and equip them with points of sale terminals, low-interest working capital, inventory management skills, and Goods and Services Tax compliance. Reliance Retail, the retail arm of RIL, has already started sending invites to Jio telecom users for registering on JioMart, said officials, adding the full-fledged launch of the web portal is likely by early next year.
With the tagline “Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan”, JioMart will currently cater to online shoppers in the suburban areas of Mumbai: Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan.“We have soft-launched our operations. Jio users across three regions can register to avail preliminary discounts now, while we plan to gradually scale up our operations. The JioMart app will be launched soon,” confirmed official requesting anonymity. JioMart is offering its users options to shop from 50,000-plus grocery products, free home delivery with no minimum order value, no-questions-asked return policy and an express delivery promise.
The app will connect both last-mile neighbourhood stores and consumers, leveraging data and technology capabilities of Reliance’s telecom business Jio and the cash-and-carry infrastructure of its retailing arm.
In August 2019, billionaire Mukesh Ambani announced it plans to connect three crore, offline retailers, to more than twenty crore households with its latest venture.
Ambani also added: “Our beta trials with thousands of merchants across multiple locations in the country established the premise of New Commerce with a significant increase in sales and improvement in margins for the participating merchants. We are now getting ready to roll out the platform at a larger scale.”
Reliance has been working on an offline-to-online initiative for almost two years to take on e-commerce behemoths Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart. The entry of deep-pocketed Reliance is also set to see heightened competition in the online grocery delivery market at a time when unicorns like Grofers and BigBasket, who are currently working on their path to profitability.
RR invites Jio telecom users
Reliance Retail (RR), the retail arm of RIL, has already started sending invites to Jio telecom users to register on JioMart. However, the full-fledged launch of the web portal is likely by early next year