Mumbai: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries is set to take on Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart with its online shopping platform aimed at small retailers. Ambani, Asia’s richest man, said that the group would launch a “new commerce platform”, a partnership between its Reliance Retail subsidiary and telecom unit Jio. A new offline-to-online platform will probably be launched in 12 to 18 months across the country, according sources. Reliance joins Amazon and Flipkart in expanding aggressively in the world’s fastest-growing major e-commerce market.
Jio currently has 280 million telecom subscribers, while Ambani’s retail arm operates nearly 10,000 outlets across more than 6,500 Indian cities and towns. “Jio and Reliance Retail will launch a unique new commerce platform to empower and enrich our 12 lakh small retailers and shopkeepers in Gujarat,” the Ambani said. As the initiative expands, Reliance Industries will look to enlist more neighborhood mom-and-pop shops as distribution and delivery centers for some products that will be available on its mobile platform. The company’s wholesale stores will help stock these mom-and-pop operations, they said. Reliance then plans to launch an e-commerce platform more directly tied to its Reliance Retail stores and to the neighborhood stores.
