JioMart To Diversify Its Categories & Offer Discounts To Rival Amazon, Flipkart

The online price war will heat up this festive season with Reliance Retail’s ecommerce platform JioMart reportedly planning its foray into fashion, smartphones and consumer electronics. It may also offer better discounts than rivals Amazon and Flipkart. 

JioMart, which launched in July this year for the online grocery and FMCG segments, has since started offering personal care, home care and baby care products. 

At Reliance’s 43rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) in July this year, the company’s chairman Mukesh Ambani had said that JioMart would soon evolve into a full-fledged ecommerce platform, expanding its presence in the fashion and consumer electronics segments, among others. 

Last week, Reliance Retail raised INR 5,500 Cr from global investment firm KKR in exchange for 1.28% equity stake in the company. The funding is meant to help Reliance Retail accelerate its digitisation ambitions as part of its ecommerce strategy, where it plans to help small and unorganised merchants leverage technology tools and an efficient supply chain infrastructure to deliver a superior value proposition to their own customers. 

Earlier this month, Reliance Retail had raised INR 7,500 Cr from Silver Lake in exchange for a 1.75% stake at a pre-money equity value of INR 4.21 lakh Cr. The company is also said to be in talks to sell a 40% stake worth $20 Bn to ecommerce giant Amazon. Moreover, media reports also suggest that Amazon’s rival Walmart may join in as an investor in Reliance Retail.

The spree of investors lining up for Reliance Retail has led many to predict that Ambani is indulging in a strategic stakes sale in the company, similar to what he has done with the company’s digital venture Jio Platforms this year. The investments in Reliance Retail come just as the company is looking to take on giants in the Indian ecommerce space, Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon, and rival their respective online discounting sales — Big Billion Days and Great Indian Festive Sales from Navratri till Diwali, which is the biggest ecommerce business period of the year and runs from mid-October to mid-November. 

According to an Economic Times report, Reliance Retail’s goal is to win a large share of total sales this festive season and win over customers loyal to rivals. Its foray in more product categories is for achieving the same.