Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail wants to beat Big Bazaar and More before taking on Flipkart and Amazon

• Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail is looking to conquer offline players like Big Bazaar, Easy Day and More before taking on Flipkart and Amazon.
• Reliance Jio is currently running pilot projects in 4 cities of its B2B platform that sells groceries to neighborhood shops.
• The 'Hybrid Online-to-Offline' platform offers cashbacks and discounts that will reportedly allow smaller stores to compete with the prices offered by bigger retail giants.

There's been a lot of talk around Mukesh Ambani planning a foray into e-commerce pushing Reliance Retail online, using Reliance Jio's network.

But, unlike Flipkart and Amazon, Ambani is building a B2B platform to sell products to neighbourhood kirana stores online rather than sell to customers directly, according to sources who spoke to Financial Express.

So, before taking on global players in e-commerce, Reliance is looking to take on larger offline retail players like Easy Day, Big Bazaar and More by allowing smaller shops to procure supplies are cheaper rates from Reliance itself.

Sources also told the Financial Express that merchants will be able to attain cash backs and other discounts to help them compete against bigger organised retail players in the segment.

From groceries to fruits and vegetable sellers, Reliance Jio's 'Hybrid Online-to-Offline' platform is currently in beta testing stage with pilot projects underway in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

Online inventory management

The platform is going to be a mobile app that merchants can sign up for once they're Jio Prime members. From the app, they will be able to place orders for fruits, vegetables and other groceries to sell at their store.

Essentially, the app will be able to manage a particular retailer's entire inventory through the portal including a software tool for goods and services tax (GST) and options to run promotional programmes like loyalty coupons.

Once pilot projects are completed, the company reportedly plans to move the app onto Reliance's MyJio app making space for a B2C interface so that merchants can then sell supplies from their store directly to customers.

Reliance is already a big player in the offline retail space and even reported an 89% jump in its income from ₹69,198 crore in 2017-18 to ₹130,556 crore in 2018-19. According to the company, it's the first retail giant in the country to have more than 10,000 stores in over 6,600 cities.

One of the reasons Reliance cited for its success in the fiscal year for strong growth in grocery consumption across its Reliance Fresh, SMART and Reliance Market stores.

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