• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

9 Fresh stores inaugurated in Delhi NCR region

Advertisement

New Delhi Jan. 29 Reliance Retail, the retail arm of the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd, having forayed into the food and grocery category through its Reliance Fresh outlets, on Monday said that it now plans to build focus on the niche retail formats alongside its existent formats.

"We are looking at opening 250 Reliance Fresh outlets by February or March in cities like Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, and in some cities in Gujarat. We will also start opening our standalone niche retailing stores that would include formats like consumer durables and apparels, amongst others. The hypermarket outlets will also come up in the same time span," said Mr Raghu Pillai, President and Chief Executive Officer (Operations and Strategy), Reliance Retail.

The company, earlier in the day, inaugurated nine Reliance Fresh stores in the Delhi NCR region taking the total number of the food and grocery outlets to 49 with an investment of about Rs 3,000 crore. It spent Rs 1,100 crore on the national capital region alone. Mr Pillai added, "Eight to 10 per cent of the Rs 25,000 crore- 30,000 crore planned to be invested in the retail venture by 2010 is already complete."

Home delivery services

Reliance also plans to start home delivery services for its Fresh outlets within a range of one to three km very soon, a move that could rob the advantage that the neighbourhood mom-n-pop stores currently have.

However, Mr Sanjeev Asthana, President and CEO, Agri and Food Supply Chain, Reliance Retail, said, "The market is big enough for the organised players and the estimated 12 million traditional stores to co-exist."

B2B format

Meanwhile, the company is also experimenting with its business-to-business (B2B) format in three outlets in Hyderabad and Jaipur. "We are trying to build a format through our B2B model that will simultaneously serve the small traditional retailers. In fact, our Chairman, Mr Mukesh Ambani, wants the B2B format to garner more than the Rs 1,00,000 crore expected from the other formats," Mr Pillai said.

Private label

Reliance Retail's plans of creating a private label, though in its nascent stage, have also been kicked off, with pilots being tried out across all formats, he added.

On the company's export plans, Mr Gunender Kapur, President and CEO, Food Business, Reliance Retail, said, "We are looking at exports. But there is this problem of surplus and deficits (of commodities). But exports are a definite possibility."

More Stories on : Retailing | Reliance Industries Ltd

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Villeroy & Boch enters India

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line