Reliance announces online grocery shopping venture JioMart

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is taking on Amazon and Flipkart by launching an e-commerce venture, JioMart. The new business is operated by Reliance Retail and it has initially been launched for the customers in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan. However, it is said to expand gradually across India. To recall, the launch of JioMart was first teased by RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani last year. With JioMart, RIL is projected to connect three crore offline retailers with over 20 crore households in the country. 

“Our beta trials with thousands of merchants across multiple locations in the country established the premise of New Commerce with a significant increase in sales and improvement in margins for the participating merchants. We are now getting ready to roll out the platform at a larger scale,” Ambani said while addressing the 42nd AGM earlier this year.

Reliance Retail has already started taking pre-registrations for JioMart. The new venture is said to offer a portfolio of over 50,000 grocery products. It is also touted to offer free home delivery against no minimum order value, no questions asked return, and express delivery promise.  JioMart will have products such as soaps, shampoos, daily staples and other household items. It is said to make things difficult for Amazon Prime Now that is aimed to offer two-hour deliveries of grocery products.

JioMart website highlights the venture as “Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan.” Further, the site shows that early customers would get up to Rs. 3,000 for pre-registration. The website also has mentions of JioMart Apps for Android and iOS, hinting that the company will let users place orders directly from their mobile devices.

Reliance Retail's valuation is double that of Avenue Supermarts Ltd., which runs India’s biggest supermarket chain. To recall, in March, Reliance agreed to acquire logistics services platform Grab A Grub to augment its e-commerce venture.

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