Tata Group plans to launch e-commerce 'super app' to take on RIL, Amazon

Tata Group is planning to launch an e commerce app with an aim to take on Amazon and Reliance Industries in the country's booming e commerce sector. With this app, the Group seeks to bring together its different consumer services for the first time. The app is expected to be launched in India in December or January.

The app eyes to provide its customers a range of products and services offered by different platforms of Tata Group, including shopping app Tata CLiQ, grocery e store StarQuik and online electronics platform Croma.

"It will be a super app, a lot of apps in apps and so on. We have a very big opportunity," Financial Times quoted N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, as saying.

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"The Tata Group, depending upon how you count, touches several hundred millions of consumers in India, if you take consumers who are walking in everyday into a Tata facility," Chandrasekaran also said.

Even as other heavyweights such as RIL have aggressively pushed for technology in their businesses, Tata Group has largely remained muted in its consumer internet offerings. Since April 2020, billionaire Mukesh Ambani led RIL has raised Rs 152,056 crore by selling 32.97 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms.

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Tata runs a conglomerate which includes a variety of businesses such as steel plants and carmaker Jaguar Land Rover. "Super apps" such as Meituan and Grab have generally remained a popular and successful concept in south-east Asia and China. However, the idea still has to find its feet in India.

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