Mumbai: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio is likely to launch its JioMart e-commerce services in 2020 to challenge the dominance of Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart in India’s fast-growing market.
Reliance has silently taken the first step in this context with the soft launch of a ‘new commerce’ venture.
According to several reports doing round the web, Reliance Retail Ltd, the retail arm of Reliance Industries Ltd Monday began sending invites to Jio telecom users for registering on the new venture named JioMart.
The venture calls itself ‘Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan’. It will initially cater to online shoppers in the suburban Mumbai areas of Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan.
JioMart currently gives its users an option to shop from 50,000-plus grocery products, free home delivery with zero minimum order limit, no-questions-asked returns and express delivery.
A Reliance Retail official, on condition of anonymity, has allegedly confirmed the soft launch to reporters. He suggested that the company would gradually scale up its business operations and added that the JioMart app will be launched soon. That said, Reliance Retail is yet to make any official statement about the launch or future plans.
A report suggests that Reliance Retail’s offline-to-online initiative will link producers, traders, small merchants, brands and consumers through technology. Reliance Jio has been working on its new commerce plan for nearly two years and currently runs neighbourhood stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, wholesale, speciality and online stores.
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is currently analyzing the consumption pattern which includes daily staples, soaps, shampoos and other household items across the country. RIL is also signing up local merchants offering them an online-to-offline (O20) marketplace, a business model pioneered by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Under the O2O model, the customers search for products and services online but buy them from physical stores.