Reliance Retail, which is a step-down subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has crossed the one billion transaction mark and is the only Indian retailer to feature in the top 100 retailers globally.
In its Annual Report, the company said the next wave of value creation for the company was built around multiple hyper-growth engines that would redefine the way India connected, consumed, and grew. It stated its strategic objective for the retail business was to transform the retail landscape in India through a win-win partnership model with producers, brand companies, and merchant partners.
The country’s largest retailer, which has over 18,000 stores, added 3,300 in the previous financial year. It covers 65.6 million square feet of store area. This is more than 50 per cent growth in retail space over the previous year and its footfalls also increased 50 per cent from last year to 780 million in FY23, Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), said in its FY23 Annual Report.
“Reliance Retail runs an integrated network of physical stores, digital commerce and new commerce initiatives. Through digital brands like Ajio and Netmeds, digital commerce is scaling up at a rapid pace and is contributing to the strong growth of the retail segment,” Ambani said.
In the previous financial year, it forayed into the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and beauty businesses. In the FMCG business it launched several products, which included brands like Independence and Campa. In the beauty business it launched digital commerce platform Tira and also opened its flagship store in Mumbai. “These businesses will be ramped up progressively in the coming period,” the company said in its report.
It also identified that shoppers expected multiple payment options and flexible payment schemes and, keeping in with the trend, it offered a wide variety of payment options and financing-partner credit schemes. It also became the first retailer in India to adopt the digital rupee.
As the third trend, it identified social commerce, which is on an uptrend across the world and in response to this, JioMart has partnered Whatsapp to launch the first ever end-to-end shopping experience.
Experiential retail becoming mainstream is another trend and the company launched Azorte last year, its premium fashion and lifestyle retail format. Azorte has several industry-first technology-enabled features, including mobile checkout, smart trial rooms, fashion discovery stations, and self-checkout kiosks, which will take the shopping experience to a new level.