Reliance Retail Completes Milkbasket Acquisition, Acquires 96.49% Stake

Continuing with its acquisition spree of consumer internet startups, Reliance Industries’ subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd has confirmed the acquisition of Milkbasket. 

The company revealed this during the announcement of Q2 FY22 financials results. 

Without divulging the financial details of the transaction, the conglomerate said, “RRVL acquired 96.49% stake in Aaidea Solutions Private Limited (Milkbasket) during the quarter.”

The oil-to-telecom giant said that the business integration of the direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform has been completed. Milkbasket is a subscription-based daily micro-delivery service, delivering fresh foods and daily needs to consumers.

According to previous reports, the deal is pegged at around $40 Mn. However, to date, the company had not confirmed the acquisition or the amount. 

In August, two RIL executives Nikhil K Chakrapani, chief financial officer (CFO) of Reliance Retail and Rajendra Kamath, CFO of Reliance Content Management, joined Milkbasket’s board of directors as additional directors.

Milkbasket also was in talks with Bigbasket, Amazon, Swiggy, and others for investments.

Founded in 2015 by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Yatish Talvadia, Milkbasket caters to household grocery needs in fruits & vegetables, dairy, bakery and more. Prior to the acquisition, the startup had raised $38.5 Mn across 11 funding rounds.

The startup that claims to deliver 130K households and offer 9,000 products, including vegetable, dairy, bakery, fruits is operational in Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru.

Milkbasket is just another startup in Mukesh Ambani-led RIL’s shopping cart aimed at building its ecommerce empire. Other acquisitions of tech-based startups by RIL completed in the recent past include epharmacy startup Netmeds, online furniture startup Urban Ladder, Zivame among others.

In its statement, RIL also said that the business integration of recently acquired home fashion brand Portico also completed in the quarter ended September.

Through the acquisitions and its ambitious JioMart plans, Reliance aims to take on ecommerce giants Amazon, Flipkart and the much talked about Tata’s upcoming super app TataNeu.