Now Reliance Industries to enter eretailing space

As per media reports, Reliance Industries will soon launch an e-commerce platform. To begin with, it will empower shopkeepers in Gujarat. Reliance has as many as 50 brand new warehouses specifically for e-commerce operations, three million small merchants hooked to cloud-based services, a new set of small format fashion stores called Trend Express and an inventory-based online marketplace model.

The online marketplace will be an extension of Reliance’s brick and mortar outreach, will not have any sellers or vendors on the platform and follow an inventory-based model. Reliance will be the sole supplier of inventory to its merchants, mom and pop stores and retailers all over the country. Reliance has 7,500 stores, 350 million customers, 215 million Reliance Jio users, a well-oiled backend machinery of a telecom network, a digital money wallet and a taxation and inventory management solution.

The company has been working on its e-commerce plans for more than three years and has been adding a slew of private labels, acquiring controlling stakes in various fashion brands, and is in discussion with several fashion retail brands in the country to create a separate line of co-branded only for Reliance-made products, which it would be selling via a new chain of small format retail stores called Trend Express.