Reliance Industries plans hyperlocal store format

New Delhi: Grocery for Reliance Industries is already over $4 billion in sales and the firm is now working on a kirana-driven delivery model for grocery under its new commerce strategy, Credit Suisse said in a report on Thursday.

RIL's previously announced new commerce initiative entails on-boarding kirana stores and digitising them via merchant POS machines. The concept was to leverage the network presence of kirana stores for RIL's e-commerce initiative. Under this initiative, RIL started JioMart pre-registration in December last year. JioMart is the food and grocery e-commerce venture. The company then announced the launch of new format grocery stores – SMART Point, which are purported to complement the JioMart initiative. 18 such stores were launched in December 2019 in three areas – Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan – which are also the pilot regions for JioMart.

In its new format 'Smart Point' stores, RIL is "using an interplay of delivery through kirana stores and own warehouse," Credit Suisse said. The Smart Point stores are a smaller version of larger Smart stores, with the same promise of 'minimum 7 per cent off on MRP' on all products. In addition to assisting the JioMart venture, these stores will also function as a full-fledged grocery outlet, which will further deepen Reliance Retail network. "Currently, the larger format SMARTstores are few and located far from a residential neighbourhood, but the Smart Point stores have been opened closer to the shopper," it said. "