Is Reliance Looking To Sell Private Label Products Through Local Stores?

In an attempt to boost its retail business, Reliance Industries is now reportedly planning to onboard local distributors such as Kirana stores and smaller shops to sell products from its private label brands such as Best Farms, Good Life, Masti Lite, Freshomz, Enzo, Scrubz, Mopz and more.

According to a media report which cited a source close to the development, the company’s private label brands will include products categories ranging from staples, food, home, personal care to general merchandising. Further, Reliance is said to be hiring FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) distributors on a trial basis. This network of FMCG distributors can also prove to be helpful for Reliance to meet the logistics and delivery needs of its online channels.

The report also noted that RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani expects the consumer business to contribute as much to the company’s earnings as its oil and refinery vertical, by 2025. The official launch of these services is expected to happen at the company’s upcoming annual general meeting on August 12.

Reliance’s Retail Plans

According to the latest company announcement, Reliance Retail recorded a turnover of over 100K Cr in FY2019 and has more than 10K stores across India. The company attributed this growth in revenue to be primarily driven by aggressive store addition and spurt in same-store sales. 

The company claimed to be growing at a rate of nearly 10 stores per day in the last two years. Reliance Retail is said to have added a total of 2.8K stores to its tally during FY 2018-19. As on March 31, 2019, Reliance Retail recorded 10,415 operational retail stores in over 6.6K Indian towns and cities.

Earlier this month, Reliance Retail has started the pilot phase of its new ecommerce initiative, a hybrid online-offline model which was first announced in 2018. Under this initiative, the company had claimed to bring together 350 Mn customer footfalls at Reliance Retail stores, 307 Mn Jio connectivity customers and 30 Mn small merchants all over India who provide the last-mile physical market connectivity.

Ambani had then also shared plans of leveraging Reliance Retail’s deep insights into Indian customers, large local presence, and best-in-class supply chain for the development of this new commerce platform. 

The company will invest in the best data analytics engines using artificial intelligence to bring a powerful offering to all consumers, merchants and small businesses, he added. 

Earlier this year, Reliance has also been aggressively acquiring new-age technology startups such as personal assistant chatbot Haptik, logistics startup Grab, software firm C-Square, vernacular language-as-a-service platform Reverie Language Technologies, Indian government schemes/services aggregator EasyGov, and a multiphysics simulation service SankhyaSutra Labs. It was also speculated to be investing or acquiring Fynd.