Reliance Industries has finally launched its online delivery model JioMart, which is now live in more than 200 Indian cities. A pilot program of online delivery was launched a month ago in Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Kalyan in Maharashtra. Entering the online retail sector, JioMart will now take on existing big players like Flipkart, Amazon in this sector.
“Never waste a crisis, A wise colleague mentioned today,” tweeted Damodar Mall, Reliance Retail CEO. He further said, “Alibaba also flourished starting from the SARS crisis”.
During the two long months, COVID-19 lockdown demand for online groceries increased across the country. Existing players like Flipkart, Amazon, Grofers, and Big Baskets tied up with local supermarkets to deliver groceries. Online food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy also added grocery sections in the app and delivered groceries from local stores and supermarkets. JioMart online is a new player in this field to grab a share in the existing online retail market.
Reliance Retail CEO also tweeted that JioMart is live on an e-commerce grocery map, will be delivering even in small towns like Bodhan in Telangana, Tadepalligudam in Andhra Pradesh, Nokha in Rajasthan and Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu.
Customers can visit the newly launched website JioMart website, jiomart.com for ordering various grocery items, fruits, vegetables, home care products, etc. At present JioMart app has not been released on Google’s play store or Apple play store.
According to the JioMart website, all products are priced 5 percent less than MRP and perishable items are sourced from registered farmers directly.
Reliance headquartered in Mumbai, last month sold 9.99 percent of its stake in JIO to Facebook for a whopping Rs 43,574 crores. It was said then, as part of this partnership Facebook will help Reliance in launching its services for Indian groceries and small businesses through its existing 400 million WhatsApp user database.
After the deal pilot program of JioMart was launched in some parts of Maharastra like Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Kalyan in Maharashtra. Orders were taken through the official Whatsapp number of JioMart. However, now the website has no Whatsapp number for taking any such orders.
Indian retail market has 70 percent of grocery while 90 percent of this grocery market comes under the unorganized sector driven by local Kirana stores, according to investment research firm Bernstein.
The retail market is expected to expand from $676 billion in 2018 to nearly $1.3 trillion by 2025 according to Bernstein. The online grocery market at present is small, worth around just 3 billion this year, according to Forrester. However, this number is growing fast.
