Reliance Industries Ltd. takes on Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. in India’s retail industry by combining online and conventional shopping through the creation of a platform.
The chairman MukeshAmbani charted out the planof taking on Amazon and Walmartat the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting. Reliance is currently seeing its biggest growth opportunity in creating a hybrid, online-to-offline new commerce platform. Their effort involves the groups Reliance Retail Ltd. and Reliance JioInfocomm Ltd. businesses. MukeshAmbani also plans to introduce a fiber-based broadband service.
Global retail powerhouses like Amazon and Walmart have been investing in India’s retail industrysince years now.Research firm eMarketers estimate thate-commerce sales may more than double to $72 billion by 2022 from $32.7 billion in 2018.Acoording to Ambani, the retail-to-refining combinationwill tap the online market after investinga total amount of$36.3 billion. This investment will be used to settle the mobile and fiber broadband infrastructure.
Reliance has crystallized its much anticipated convergence plans. The centrepiece this year was a peek into its convergence strategy across homes, enterprise & e-commerce premised on its fiber network.
Walmart, known to be the world’s largest retailer, quoted that it will acquire a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart Online Services Pvt. for $16 billion. The aim was to grab an asset that had attracted many of the world’s most powerful and influential people including Jeff Bezs, the world’s richest person.
According to Ambani, the platform is said to use augmented reality, virtual reality, and holographs to create an engrossing shopping experience for its consumers. The service will be available to small merchants as well. This will enable them to do everything like the large enterprises and e-commerce players.
