Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has finally announced that it is planning to enter e-commerce arena of India, the company is poised to launch multi-channel shopping in the this year only as per groundreport.com. Reliance retail was established eight year ago under the stewardship of Mukesh Ambani.
Reliance Retail is the biggest player in the fast-growing Indian retail market with 1,691 stores all over India spread across 11.7 million sq. ft., space in 146 cities. These figures will surely help Reliance to smoothly enter e-commerce market in India as they already have an edge of established brands and core customer connect.
Across India, Reliance Retail serves over 2.5 million customers every week. Its loyalty programme, 'Reliance One', has the patronage of more than 6.75 million customers.
Although Reliance has e-commerce portals in some of its international fashion brands and a website for its consumer electronics, iStore is one such e-commerce store by Reliance Digital which is a one-stop-shop for all Apple products and services. However it is for the first time that the company is exploring e-commerce in value business, digital and fashion, which accounted for nearly 90 per cent of its revenues in FY 2014
The burgeoning e-commerce market in India that accounts nearly $16 billion in 2014 is perhaps the main reason that Reliance retail choose this as a perfect time to have an online presence.
The penetration of e-commerce is comparatively low to markets like US and the UK however it is growing at a much faster rate than US or UK. India has close to 10 million online shoppers and is growing at an estimated 30%. On March 7, 2014 India's homegrown Flipkart claimed it has hit $1 billion (Rs.6,000 crore) in sales.
In financial year - 2014, Reliance retail generated revenues of Rupees 14,496 Crores and posted an after-tax profit of Rupees 180 Crore.
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