Reliance Retail plans aggressive expansion

Reliance Retail plans to capture a lion’s share of the organised Indian retail market. The Mukesh Ambani-led retail giant is charting aggressive expansion plans. It will consolidate its leadership position through a four-pronged strategy—expanding geographical reach into smaller towns, innovating more concept stores, going omni-channel and leveraging technology and data analytics.

Reliance Retail operates over 7,573 brick-and-mortar stores across 4,400 cities. The company also plans to converge its offline and online business through a omni-channel strategy to offer a seamless experience to their customers. It is already operating a connected store concept providing anytime, anywhere, any device-seamless customer experience. The company plans to roll out more initiatives in a phased manner during the fiscal.

Reliance Retail, India’s largest retailer by revenue and profitability, has grown over 45 per cent annually for the last five years and operates in four key consumption baskets—grocery, consumer electronics & connectivity, fashion & lifestyle, and fuel retail.

India’s retail market is expected to increase by 60 per cent by 2020, on the back of factors like rising incomes and lifestyle changes by middle class and increased digital connectivity. The organised retail market is only nine per cent of the total sector and the unorganised retail market constitutes the rest 91 per cent of the sector.