A month after successfully conducting a pilot across areas in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Reliance Retail's online venture JioMart on Saturday expanded its services across several towns and cities. JioMart will deliver groceries in more than 200 towns across the country, Damodar Mall, chief executive of Reliance Fresh & Reliance Smart in Reliance Group, took to Twitter to make this announcement. He said that the company will start services in Nokha in Rajasthan, Bodhan in Telangana, Nagarcoil in Tamilnadu, Tadepalligudem in Andhra, Rayagada, Odisha and Darjeeling, Bengal.
Customers can now log on to the newly-launched Reliance Industries' e-commerce portal, jiomart.com, to buy groceries, fruits, vegetables and other daily-need stuff. The JioMart app has not yet been made live.
The company intends to explore opportunities in areas like e-commerce and offline-to-online (O2O) segment which has suddenly been gaining traction in the COVID-19 situation. The move is aimed at rivalling Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart which count India as one of their most important overseas markets.
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Last month, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail had launched its grocery delivery service through Facebook's WhatsApp in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan to deliver daily consumption items such as staples, soaps, shampoos and household items. The development came days after social media giant Facebook announced to spend $5.7 billion for 9.99 per cent stake in the company's digital unit, Jio Platforms.
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Reliance Industries has raised $10 billion in just a month through five-stake sales in digital unit Jio Platforms, whose valuation has surged to $65 billion. Jio Platforms has sold stake Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic and US equity firm KKR.
By Chitranjan Kumar