Reliance Retail is gearing up to make an aggressive play in the beauty segment. The company is set to launch its online beauty platform Tira for consumers in the next few weeks As part of its omni-channel strategy, the retail major will also open the offline standalone beauty store under brand Tira in Mumbai by April.

Reliance Retail forayed in the beauty e-commerce segment with the launch Tira in February, which is currently available for its employees. The company aims to house premium brands under brand Tira and may look at another format for the mass beauty segment.

Speaking at the sidelines of a FICCI event, Subramaniam V, Director, Reliance Retail, said, “Tira will soon be available for consumers. We are also launching the first offline store in Mumbai by April.” The platform offers a vast collection of beauty brands.

Expansion strategy

Talking about the beauty stores’ expansion strategy, he said, “We will have a sufficient number of stores to have a strong pan-India presence. Tira will be the premium piece of it (beauty business), non-premium we are yet to decide.”

This comes at a time when multiple players are vying for a piece of the fast-growing beauty business.

Stating that India is a consumption-led country which will be led by middle-income households, he added that the retail industry is poised to witness strong growth across offline and online channels.’

In his address at the event earlier in the day, Subramaniam said there is a need to build an operating environment which promotes inclusive and sustainable growth for the retail sector and government policies and business practices of the big players must support the inclusive growth for the small and unorganised players.

Sourcing ecosystem

“There is a need to build a sourcing ecosystem that supports small producers and manufacturers (SMEs) to modernise their operations to produce high-quality products,” he said.

Subramaniam also stressed on the need to step up investments for developing the supply-chain infrastructure in India by linking all major sourcing locations through a scalable warehousing and logistics ecosystem.

He added that the retail industry requires policy interventions by both Central and State governments for modernisation and ease of doing business. He added that currently, retailers require between 10 and 75 licenses to open retail stores. He said some of the policy interventions should include reduction in licenses required. Subramaniam also said a State can look at giving a business entity a “single licence” to operate stores. 

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW