Indian ecommerce market is vastly dominated by the two giants Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart who have been fighting relentlessly to grab a bigger portion of the ecommerce pie.
With the launch of Jiomart, Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance Industries is set to tackle the Indian ecommerce titans.
Jiomart which is termed as “Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan” is currently only available in the Mumbai suburbs including Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan. However, the online venture already has a catalogue of over 50,000 products and also offer free delivery without any minimum order value.
According to media reports, following the soft launch of the operations, the Jiomart app will be launched soon and the company will expand to other parts of the country.
With over 10,000 retail stores spread across over 6,700 cities in the country, Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, is well-positioned to take on the Indian ecommerce leaders Amazon and Flipkart. Adding the deep pockets of India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, Reliance could change the Indian online commerce market.
It won’t be surprising, considering how Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio took the Indian telecom industry by storm and became India’s second-largest telecom operator.
Indian retail market is expected to touch $1.375 billion by 2026, while the ecommerce market in India is projected to reach $200 billion by the same year. Even with the rise of ecommerce in India, market penetration is expected to be low at 2% and is projected to reach 12%.
Backed by a robust offline infrastructure, Reliance Industries is set to operate on an Online to Offline model and offer its customers a wider range of options across different touchpoints.
According to reports, the company is also reaching out to local merchants and incentivising them to join the Jiomart platform.
There have been numerous reports, suggesting Amazon is set to acquire a stake in Kishore Biyani’s Future Coupons, a promoter entity of India’s second-largest retail chain Future Retail. This could be Amazon’s bid to access the growing offline retail market in India, which is considerably bigger than the Indian ecommerce space.
The impact of the latest move by Reliance Industries on the Indian ecommerce market is yet to be seen. With all three ecommerce players flush with cash, it would be interesting to see how the battle for dominance in the Indian e-commerce space plays out.
Furthermore, Amazon and Flipkart are also struggling to keep up with regulatory changes. Earlier this month, both Indian ecommerce giants were ordered by the Indian government to submit annual compliance reports as per FDI norms.