JioMart will compete with vertical online marketplaces such as Alibaba-backed BigBasket and SoftBank-funded Grofers and horizontal players including Amazon Pantry, Flipkart Supermart, etc. Mukesh Ambani’s online grocery venture JioMart has expanded operations to multiple cities after running a pilot program in Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Kalyan. While the number of cities JioMart is now serving is not confirmed but based on the pin codes punched-in showed that the service is available in multiple Tier-I and II cities such as Chandigarh, Dehradun, Dhanbad, Gwalior, Kota, Ludhiana, Surat etc. Customers in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and other metros can also order from JioMart that will compete with vertical online marketplaces such as Alibaba-backed BigBasket and SoftBank-funded Grofers and horizontal players including Amazon Pantry, Flipkart Supermart, etc.
Highlights:
- JioMart’s website goes live across 200 cities in India.
- Reliance Retail’s success to change the dynamics of the grocery industry.
Reliance Jio’s hotly-awaited online shopping portal JioMart is now open for orders in 200 cities across India including all major metros and tier II and III cities such as Mysuru, Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore, Dehradun, and Bhatinda. The wider launch of the service comes after the company began testing its home delivery service in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan in late April, soon after social network giant Facebook announced it was investing $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio.
“Reliance launches JioMart service across cities,” tweeted Damodar Mall, CEO of Grocery Retail at Reliance Retail. “Big town or small, JioMart delivers in over 200 towns.”
JioMart lists fresh food, pulses, packaged food, household cleaning items and pet food among a few other categories of products on its website currently, going up squarely against players such as BigBasket, Grofers, Amazon Fresh and Pantry, and Flipkart’s Supermart
Earlier this week the American e-commerce giant entered India’s food delivery market to challenge the duopoly of Proses Ventures-backed Swiggy and Ant Financial-backed Zomato. Amazon is making a massive hiring push in India and is looking to hire close to 50,000 seasonal workers to keep up with the growing demand on its platform.
Meanwhile, Ambani’s Reliance Retail, founded in 2006, remains the largest retailer in India by revenue. It serves more than 3.5 million customers each week through its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 cities and towns.JioMart may have Amazon and Flipkart in its sights, but in its current form, however, the company is going to be more of a headache for Grofers and BigBasket, the top grocery delivery startups in India. Currently, JioMart does not have any official application nor it is yet connected with WhatsApp, but both the options will be made available in the coming months.
“Given COVID-19 related issues, we expect issues like delayed delivery or lack of delivery option to be resolved in the coming months”, according to the research. The introduction of own labels is the logical step in due course, which would be margin positive – generic product name along with own label could alter the FMCG industry dynamics.
Unlike the competition, RRL offers POS (handheld device) free of cost, with less than ₹5,000 refundable deposit, with no monthly outgo.RRL’s POS allows retailers to manage inventory, place orders on RRL, accept payment, generate tax returns; hence, it is not just another POS. However, not every retailer is using all functionalities as of now.RRL is also building B2B presence, while an important aspect of its B2C strategy, the retailer has an option to even sell in the offline segment, on his own.
