With e-commerce app JioMart, Reliance Retail—billionaire Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries’ (RIL’s) organised retail arm—is all set to enter into instant grocery delivery service to give a hard time to the US-based online retail behemoth Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart in India.
India’s largest retail chain will launch ‘JioMart Express’ trials from Navi Mumbai in the next two to four days, selling and delivering about 2,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) in a few hours, ET reported citing two senior industry executives familiar with the plans. The company will start with one to three hours of delivery time in Navi Mumbai. Reliance will gradually cut this to match the industry standard of up to an hour.
Currently, JioMart is present in more than 200 cities, and Reliance Retail wants to take quick grocery delivery service to these towns by the end of the next quarter and expand it 100 per cent in the next few months, to make it India’s largest instant grocer.
More importantly, Reliance is testing a separate app for instant express grocery service as well as integrating it into the existing JioMart platform.
The online grocery market has emerged as one of the most coveted retail segments with the entry of big names such as Tata Group, Reliance, Amazon, and Flipkart. JioMart faces competition fromTata-owned BigBasket (set to launch in April), Zomato-backed Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart, Flipkart Quick and Zepto, an instant grocery delivery startup.
Further Reliance will utilise its network of grocery stores for such fulfilment, as well as its own chain of grocery stores, the daily reported citing the executives.
In January, Reliance Retail infused a $240 million investment in quick commerce startup Dunzo and acquired a 25.8 per cent stake in the Bengaluru-based startup, which promises the delivery of groceries within 19 minutes in select cities.“JioMart Express will utilise Dunzo as well as its own delivery fleet in markets where it is strong, like the metro cities. JioMart Express can be quickly scaled up since Reliance has onboarded lakhs of kiranas under its B2B programme, JioMart Partner, which buys the merchandise from Reliance and sells through the JioMart platform,” the publication quoted an executive as saying.
Reliance has been delivering orders such as mobile phones and laptops, placed through Reliance Digital online or app, in less than three hours.
