1. Home
  2. Reliance Retail’s e-commerce foray to be biggest challenge for Amazon and Flipkart

Reliance Retail’s e-commerce foray to be biggest challenge for Amazon and Flipkart

Agencies
May 21, 2019

Reliance Retail's upcoming entry into the online retail sector is the biggest challenge for Amazon and Walmart-Flipkart as the Mukesh Ambani-led behemoth is well positioned to create massive disruption in the market, a new report has stressed.

According to the global market research firm Forrester, the online retail sales in India will grow at a five-year CAGR of 25.8 per cent to reach $85 billion by 2023, despite the hiccups of demonetization in 2016, GST in 2017 and the governmental changes in eCommerce policy announced last December.

The time is ripe for Reliance Retail, which operates 10,415 stores in more than 6,600 cities, with 500 million annual footfalls - giving the company the kind of scale required to swiftly launch India-based operations.

"One of the things that will trouble Amazon and Flipkart is Reliance's history of launching operations via massive discounts," Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research, said on Tuesday.

Reliance entered the telecom sector in 2003 with the Monsoon Hungama tariff plan, which brought tariffs for voice calls down to just Rs 0.40 a minute from the existing rate of Rs 2 a minute, followed by the launch of Jio 4G plan in 2016 that dropped data rates from Rs 250 per GB to Rs 50 per GB.

"This kind of discounting can disrupt any market, and we expect something similar to happen in the grocery space during Reliance launch," Meena added.

Reliance is fast working on creating the world's largest online-to-offline New Commerce Platform, according to Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries.

"Due to the recent changes in eCommerce policy and the restrictions on an inventory-led model for marketplaces with FDI, Reliance Retail is finding a favourable policy environment to launch operations where it can use its existing retail infrastructure to deliver goods to customers," the Forrester report noted.

Reliance launched the food and grocery app among its employees in April 2019 to prepare for the commercial launch later in the year.

Reliance Retail is the largest retailer in India, with $18.7 billion in revenue during financial year 2019, and it grew at a CAGR of 55 per cent in the last five years.

Reliance Retail had $81 billion in revenue and $9.4 billion in profit during 2019.

"This gives Reliance Retail access to long-term capital from the conglomerate, which has a presence in energy, petrochemicals, telecom, textiles, retail, and natural resources," said Forrester.

Reliance Retail also has a portfolio of over 40 brands, from the midmarket to premium segments and including Hamleys (which the company has acquired for Rs 620 crore) and Marks & Spencer.

"These can provide a boost to the fashion and lifestyle segment, which will be the largest category by online spending in the coming years," said the report.

Reliance launched its mobile business at the end of 2015, and by April 2019, it had over 300 million mobile subscribers, making it the third-largest player in a short span of time.

Jio is building on these mobile subscribers by investing in related services to create an ecosystem that gives customers access to rich content and payments options.

This ecosystem will be available for Reliance Retail to build on.

To compete with Amazon and Flipkart, Reliance will have to significantly improve the customer experience, both in stores and on its online channel, because discounts and cashbacks will not generate loyalty for online customers, as we saw in the Paytm Mall case.

"Removal of discounts may lead to a significant loss of buyers from the platform. The positioning of the Reliance platform and its fulfilment will play a critical role in the fight against Amazon and Flipkart," emphasised the Forrester report.

The eCommerce competition in India remains fierce.

Amazon has been the most popular online retailer since it surpassed Flipkart in 2016, although Flipkart is still the single-largest online retailer, with 31.9 per cent market share in 2018 (38.4 per cent if you include Myntra and Jabong), closely followed by Amazon at 31 per cent.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
March 3,2020

Facebook on Monday launched a new consumer marketing campaign in India titled 'More Together'. India is the first country in the Asia Pacific region where such a campaign is being rolled out.

It is also the first time that Facebook is rolling out a 'high decibel campaign of this stature in India', the company said in a statement.

It is also the first time that Facebook is rolling out a 'high decibel campaign of this stature in India', the company said in a statement.

"India is at the heart of Facebook and one of our focus areas this year is to tell the exciting story of a service that is deeply embedded in the fabric of India," said Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India.

The campaign would have multiple campaigns over the next few weeks in eight languages and the one will be set in the context of Holi.

Facebook in 2019 introduced a new company logo to further distinguish the company from the Facebook app.

The company recently announced the appointment of Avinash Pant as the Marketing Director for India operations, to drive the consumer marketing efforts across the family of apps.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
June 16,2020

Paris, Jun 16: Increasing numbers of readers are paying for online news around the world even if the level of trust in the media, in general, remains very low, according to a report published Tuesday.

Around 20 percent of Americans questioned said they subscribed to an online news provider (up to four points over the previous year) and 42 percent of Norwegians (up eight points), along with 13 percent of the Dutch (up to three points), compared with 10 percent in France and Germany.

But between a third and a half of all news subscriptions go to just a few major media organisations, such as the New York Times, according to the annual Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute.

Some readers, however, are also beginning to take out more than one subscription, paying for a local or specialist title in addition to a national news source, the study's authors said.

But a large proportion of internet users say nothing could convince them to pay for online news, around 40 percent in the United States and 50 percent in Britain.

YouGov conducted the online surveys of 40 countries for the Reuters Institute in January, with 2,000 respondents in each.

Further surveys were carried out in six countries in April to analyse the initial effects of COVID-19.

The health crisis brought a revival of interest in television news -- with the audience rising five percent on average -- establishing itself as the main source of information along with online media.

Conversely, newspaper circulation was hard-hit by coronavirus lockdown measures.

The survey found trust in the news had fallen to its lowest level since the first report in 2012, with just 38 percent saying they trusted most news most of the time.

However, confidence in the news media varied considerably by country, ranging from 56 percent in Finland and Portugal to 23 percent in France and 21 percent in South Korea.

In Hong Kong, which has been hit by months of sometimes violent street protests against an extradition law, trust in the news fell 16 points to 30 percent over the year.

Chile, which has had regular demonstrations against inequality, saw trust in the media fall 15 percent while in Britain, where society has been polarised by issues such as Brexit, it was down 12 points.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
March 14,2020

New Delhi, Mar 14: Excise duty on petrol and diesel was on Saturday hiked by ₹3 per litre as the government looked to mop up gains arising from fall in international oil prices.

Special excise duty on petrol was hiked by ₹2 to ₹8 per litre incase of petrol and to Rs 4 incase of diesel, an official notification said.

Additionally, road cess on petrol was raised by ₹1 per litre each on petrol and diesel to ₹10.

The increase in excise duty would in normal course result in a hike in petrol and diesel prices but most of it would be adjusted against the fall in rates that would have necessitated because of slump in international oil prices.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.