Reliance Retail to open 500 hypermarkets by 2010

Aug 16: Reliance Retail, the subsidiary of Reliance Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani group launches toady its second hypermarket in Kolkata, West Bengal after just the two days later from the inauguration of first ever hypermarket in Ahmedabad on Monday on the of Independence day.

To provide western-style retail facility “Reliance Mart” will sell a range of 95,000 types of items includes consumer durable products (clothing, stationery, toys, medicines, home furnishings, footwear etc), FMCG, IT, automotive accessories, apparel accessories, fine jewelry and fashion jewelry under one roof. For this Reliance will set up a series of 500 hypermarkets across the country by 2010 while the recent next hypermarket will be established in Jamnagar in Gujarat and in the NCR by next month with a planning to open 30 such marts by the end of this year includes six in National Capital Delhi, five each in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, three in Gujarat and two in Bangalore, informed RIL president and CEO (Operation and Strategy) Raghu Pillai on the occation of first hypermarket in Ahmedabad on Monday.

“We will be better than the best in the market. We would ensure that our products would be cheapest on the consumers wallet and would match the lowest price in the market with the best quality as benchmark”, said Pillai. Reliance has set up the first hypermarket in 1,65,000 sq ft area worth Rs. 4.25 crore approximately for selling groceries to general merchandising in Reliance Mart.

Reliance had announced last year to invest Rs. 25,000 crore in its retail store and expected to spend Rs. 2,500-3,000 per square fit for establishing 500 hypermarkets in 784 towns by next five years. Since then Reliance has been looking for deserving lands across the country to fulfill its dream project.

Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Mukesh Dhirubhai Group said, “Organised retail has the potential to trigger socio-economic transformation on an unprecedented scale in our country and will bring about enormous spin-off benefits to the Indian economy and its various constituents. The launch of ‘RelianceMart’ is yet another step by Reliance Retail towards providing an international shopping experience to all our customers at unmatched affordability, guaranteed quality and choice of products and services”. He was speaking on inauguration ceremony of first ever hypermarket in Ahmedabad.

Reliance will provide some innovative and unique services to the shoppers such as tailoring, shoe repair, watch repair, a photo shop, gifting services and laundry services all within the store under one roof. The facility of owned fresh bakery service will be all time available under brand name of ''hot off the oven''.

Last November, Reliance had set up a cluster of Fresh stores ‘RelianceFresh’ in Hyderabad that faced the fury of local farmers and small vegetable sellers. As much as 250 fresh vegetable, fruits and grocery shops had been opened in 10 states as part of its 'farm to fork' planning. Reliance had also opened its first Digital store ‘Reliance Digital’ in Ghaziabad in the terms of its mega planning near Delhi in July this year.

Vimal, a well-known fabric brand of Reliance Industries Ltd. will also relaunch its products that will have a store within its hypermarkets and will offer custom-tailoring services, said Parimal Nathwani, the Group President of Corporate Affairs.

Besides this, Reliance Retail is building a vigorous and state-of-the-art supply chain infrastructure in parallel to cover the entire country along with setting up its own cold storage chain discretely. “It is expected to generate direct employment for half-a-million people and indirect employment to two million”, said Pillai.

To woo the customers, RelianceMart will keep on offering versatile offers to all its customers such as ‘RelianceOne’, a common membership and loyalty programme across all its formats, which follows the philosophy of 'Earn Anywhere, Spend Anywhere'. ‘RelianceMart’ will also provide easy and attractive finance options, including zero percent financing for the purchases on some selected products.