Reliance Retail's discounts may get better as the company grows bigger

• Reliance Industries announced its Q1 earnings today.
• Reliance Retail reported an EBITDA of ₹2,049 crores.
• The retail arm of the company has seen a 69.9% year-on-year growth.

Reliance Retail posted robust pre-tax profits today as it grew by around 70%, to ₹2,049 crores in the first quarter of 2019-20 as compared to ₹1,206 crore last year.

The revenues from Reliance Retail grew at 47.5% to ₹38,196 crores in the quarter ending June 2019 as compared to ₹25,890 crores in the same quarter last year.

“Our EBITDA crosses ₹2,000 crore for the first time (retail business). In our core retail, we have the best margin we have ever seen at 8.9%. We have expanded our footprint. We added over 200 stores in this quarter to now have 10,644 stores across the country. We also achieved the milestone of having 100 million registered loyalty customers, and saw 150 million footfalls in our stores,” said Alok Agarwal, CFO, Reliance Industries Limited.

Agarwal said that this growth has come as Reliance is offering more to its consumers, is present in every part of the country, offering better assortments, better after-sales service support.

“We are beginning to take the benefits of scale. As we grow bigger and bigger, we are also able to give consumers better deals and discounts, simply because we are getting better at merchandising,” said Agarwal.

Reliance Retail has 10,644 stores in over 6,700 cities. It is present across areas like food and grocery, consumer electronics, fashion and lifestyle.

In the food and grocery segment, Reliance Retail operates Reliance Fresh, Reliance Smart and Reliance Market stores, while in consumer electronics it has Reliance Digital, Reliance Digital Express Mini stores and Jio stores. In the fashion & lifestyle segment, it has Reliance Trends, Trends Women, Project Eve, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Jewels and AJIO.com.

Reliance Retail, which was launched in 2006, has been growing rapidly over the years and has been aggressively acquiring companies as well. Earlier this year, Reliance Retail had acquired the iconic British toy making company Hamley’s and in July completed the 100% acquisition of the company for a reported amount of ₹620 crore.

Meanwhile, there are also reports that Reliance Retail is bringing the iconic American brand Tiffany & co to India, as per an ET report. The brand could be housed in the luxury mall that Ambani is planning to open next year in the Jio World Centre in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai.