The kiranas will source goods from the retail giant or elsewhere in case it is not available with Reliance Retail.
In a marked change in its strategy, Reliance Retail will rope in kirana stores as franchise partners to sell products while completely moving away from the direct sale of packaged food, grocery and FMCG products on its JioMart platform.
“This marks a shift in strategy that differentiates it from other big e-grocery platforms such as BigBasket, Amazon and Grofers,” said a report in The Economic Times.
According to the report, Reliance Retail will continue to sell perishables items on its own. The kiranas will source goods from the retail giant or elsewhere in case it is not available with Reliance Retail.
The Economic Times report further said that Reliance Industries will shelve its B2B cash-and-carry store format and turn Reliance Market into B2B delivery of products to kirana stores.
In December last year, The Times of India in a report said that JioMart was servicing nearly 5 lakh daily orders on average.
Citing a JPMorgan study, Business Insider said in a piece that “JioMart has already crossed BigBasket and Grofers in terms of daily active users” and already registering a million daily active users and 2.3 million active users every month.
According to a CNBC-TV18 report, in March last year, Reliance Industries had expanded its JioMart service to customers across several cities, after successfully conducting a pilot across areas in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan.
In July last year, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani had said while addressing 43rd AGM that JioMart will cover electronics, pharma, fashion and healthcare going ahead.
“JioMart and WhatsApp will be working together with Kirana stores. WhatsApp’s 400 million users bring unique value to Jio-Facebook partnership,” Ambani said.
Ambani said Reliance Retail was India’s largest and most profitable retail business. “In the last five years, retail business revenue has grown 8x and profits 11x.”
“Our growth model is based on partnership with small merchants. We have successfully piloted JioMart grocery delivery and reached over 2.50 lakh orders per day on JioMart,” he said.
Disclosure: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd, of which Firstpost is a part
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