Reliance Industries Ltd’s JioMart, launched in May, could become the fastest-growing e-commerce platform in India, challenging Amazon India and Flipkart, analysts said.
According to Goldman Sachs, RIL’s online gross merchandise value (GMV) will reach $35 billion in FY25 with a 31% share of the e-commerce market from around 1% now. GMV is the total value of merchandise sold over a given period and is a measure of growth.
The second quarter of this fiscal saw RIL’s retail business record robust growth across consumption baskets, posting sales of ₹41,100 crore, an increase from ₹31,620 crore in the preceding June quarter. Higher bill value more than compensated for the lower footfall at the company’s grocery stores, 85% of which were shut due to the pandemic-induced lockdown.
Under the grocery segment, staples and processed food drove growth, with home and personal care products also delivering a strong performance as consumers continued to work from home.
JioMart has scaled up partnerships with 1,700 merchants and extended ‘kirana’ store partnerships to 20 cities against six in the last quarter. Reliance Retail opened 232 stores during the quarter, taking the total store count to 11,931 stores.
What will also aid growth for RIL’s e-commerce is the approval for WhatsApp Pay to go live on the UPI platform. This April, WhatsApp entered into a separate partnership with Reliance Retail/JioMart after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms Ltd for a 9.99% stake. WhatsApp’s integration with JioMart will strengthen the offering not only for the 60 million small merchants on JioMart but also for telecom operator Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.
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