Reliance Retail’s new commerce proposition gains pace

Mumbai, May 7: Reliance Retail’s new commerce proposition has gained pace and registered 3-fold growth in merchant base in the 2021-22 financial year. Speaking on the financial performance, Gaurav Jain, Head – Strategy & Business Development, Reliance Retail said, “Our efforts in scaling up digital commerce and new commerce businesses are on track, and we continue to make new highs quarter after quarter. Digital orders are up 2.5x, merchant base is up 3x over the course of the year. Our share of business through all these new emerging channels is at about 17%.” Consumer electronics new commerce initiative, JioMart Digital launched during the year witnessed 50% sequential growth in new commerce business. Merchant partners throughout the country, including small towns, offering wide assortment of electronics and home appliances across categories. With wider catalogue merchants see business growth. Similarly, fashion and apparel segment’s new commerce revenues witnessed 3.5x growth over last year with partner base now in over 3,500 towns across India. It has added 750 labels during the year and launched four own brands on new commerce platform. Strong traction received from small town merchants with 75% orders coming from Tier 3 and below towns and average value per merchant increasing more than twice year on year. The new commerce proposition for Kiranas has also gained pace and pharma category grew exponentially during the year. Year-on-year growth of merchants base increased 4x while existing merchants buying significantly more, order more often & more product lines. It has also added region specific assortment and augmented supply chain to improve reach and delivery performance. It is now directly servicing kiranas in nearly 300 cities and towns witnessing more than 2x growth YoY. Supply locations and warehouses capacity increased 4-times with 21 Smart Hubs and 34 Staples Hubs getting operationalised during the previous quarter. Merchandising teams have been set up close to the semi urban and rural markets where we are expanding too to capture and offer the relevant local assortment. The merchant partner acquisition team too has strengthened with daily acquisition capability at 3x YoY. The business has tied up with a bouquet of credit and payment partners to offer credit without collaterals to the smallest of Kiranas thereby helping them with working capital requirements. Further the chemist channel segment of the business is also gathering pace and in the last quarter alone new commerce operations scaled up to 1,900 cities and merchant base doubled quarter on quarter. As the merchant onboarding gathers pace, Reliance Retail continues to build and enhance its fulfilment facilities, delivery fleet, partner acquisition capacity, and other supporting infrastructure in order to cater to the millions of kiranas across the country. In addition to enabling kiranas with a comprehensive digital platform for ordering their supplies, the new commerce proposition also brings a wide choice of merchandise to the kiranas enabling them to grow their business by catering to evolving consumer demands. Further, the initiative is also helping grow the sales and earnings of Kirana partners by getting offers for their end consumers through digitised coupons which are sent directly to consumers who then redeem it at their kirana stores. These offers are brought to the kirana by Reliance Retail and therefore do not entail any burden on the margins earned by kiranas. An additional revenue opportunity has been created by Reliance Retail for the kiranas through TV screens installed in Kirana stores, where suppliers play their ads and Kiranas earn from the same. Reliance Retail helps the kiranas market all the promotions, offers and new launches by brands with the catchment, digitally.