Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has spent over Rs7,600 crore over the past nine months of this fiscal towards investing in and acquiring assets to strengthen its retail business, according to an official from the company.
"We have spent close to about 7600 crores plus in the first nine months in investing and acquiring assets and investing in capabilities which will help us reach out to our customers and offer better quality of products and also improved service delivery," said Gaurav Jain, Head - Strategy and Business Development, Reliance Retail.
Last quarter, RIL's retail arm, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) acquired a 52% equity stake in Ritika Pvt Ltd that owns Ritu Kumar, Label Ritu Kumar, RI Ritu Kumar, aarké, and Ritu Kumar Home and Living.
RRVL bought out private equity firm Everstone Group’s 35% in the company to acquire majority share in the company. It also bought 40% in Manish Malhotra’s eponymous brand.
"Kalanikethan, which is a leading saris and ethnic wear retailer while Jaisuryas is a regional grocery chain in Southern India, which is going to help us fill up gaps in some of the smaller markets in the southern markets. Dunzo which is leading last mile delivery and also a quick commerce player which will help us further strengthen our delivery capabilities to our customers," added Jain.
Reliance Retail, on Friday reported a 23.4% on-year growth in its consolidated net profit at Rs 2,259 crore for the October-December quarter of FY22.
It also reported an all-time high revenue and EBITDA in Q3FY22. Consolidated gross revenue for the quarter was up 52.5% on-year Rs 57,714 for Q3 of FY22. Gross revenue from consumption baskets excluding Petro and Connectivity grew by 90% over the previous year to Rs 33,714 crore in the quarter under review.
During the quarter, the business added 837 stores taking the total count to 14,412 stores and 2.3 million sq ft. of warehousing space to bolster its service capabilities.
JP Morgan Equity Research said it values RIL's O2C business at $65bn, and Retail at $98bn with a JioMart value of $23bn.
The business has also launched JioMart Digital this quarter where it is looking at working with merchants across geographies, onboarding them. The focus, the company said is on onboarding a wider set of merchants and service them across the country.
"On the new commerce side really, the focus has been on onboarding merchants. This has been a period where we have now on boarded, 10x growth of merchants between last year and this year. And we are continuously investing in supply chain infrastructure so that we are able to serve them better," added Jain.