RIL launches its e-commerce venture My Jio Mart

My Jio Mart, which is backed by Reliance Jio Infocomm’s IT backbone, has onboarded around 50,000 local grocers in its online platform, will start operations in suburbs of Mumbai including Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan.

My Jio Mart will take on the might of e-tailers such as Amazon and Flipkart with help from local grocers to establish itself as a force to reckon with.

The newly launched venture would act as an aggregator where it will partner with local grocers and equip them with points of sale (PoS) terminals, low-interest working capital, inventory management skills, and help with GST compliance.

JioMart, which comes with the tag line “Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan”, is expected to take on online grocery specialists such as Bigbasket and Grofers, and large e-tailers with grocery delivery plans, such as Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart.

After the initial test-market in Kalyan, Navi Mumbai and Thane, My Jio Mart will scale up operations nationwide, sources said. 

Reliance has digitally connected the local grocery stores and some of their products can be seen live on its platform. “Currently, kirana stores have been invited to register on the platform,” a source said.

On Monday, RIL’s retail arm Reliance Retail started sending JioMart invites to its telecom users. The grocery platform is offering its users options to shop from 50,000-plus grocery products, free home delivery with no minimum order value.

Reliance Retail already operates multi-format stores ranging from neighbourhood to supermarket. Reliance Retail has over 10,091 stores spanning nearly 7,000 towns in the country. 

Reliance had unveiled its new commerce plan a few months back and the plan is seen as a $700 billion opportunity for the company. RIL’s retail arm plans to “empower” 30 million small traders and merchants via its platform, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani had said earlier at the 42nd Annual General Meeting. “New Commerce is a massive new business opportunity of $700 billion… the main purpose of New Commerce is to completely transform the unorganized retail market,” he had said. 

At present, India’s unorganised retail industry accounts for about 80 per cent of the country’s total retail business. 

Reliance Retail like Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, is deploying new-age technologies to link producers, traders, small merchants, consumer brands and shoppers on an all-India basis. 

The retail arm of Reliance Industries Limited is also working on merchant Point of Sale (POS) Solution in order to create an ecosystem for India’s commerce. “This user-friendly digital platform is designed for inventory management, customer relationship management, financial services and other services,” RIL chairman had said.