Growth through Value Creation

With a vision to generate inclusive growth and prosperity for farmers, vendor partners, small shopkeepers and consumers, Reliance Retail Limited (RRL), a subsidiary of RIL, was set up to lead Reliance Group’s foray into organized retail.

With a 27% share of world GDP, retail is a significant contributor to overall economic activity across the world. Of this, organized retailing contributes between 20% to 55% in various developing markets. The Indian retail industry is pegged at $ 300 billion and growing at over 13% per year. Of this, presently, organized retailing is about 5%. This is expected to grow to 10% by 2011. RRL has embarked upon an implementation plan to build state-of-the-art retail infrastructure in India, which includes a multi-format store strategy of opening neighbourhood convenience stores, hypermarkets, specialty and wholesale stores across India.

RRL launched its first store in November 2006 through its convenience store format ‘Reliance Fresh’. Since then RRL has rapidly grown to operate 590 stores across 13 states at the end of FY 2007-08. RRL launched its first ‘Reliance Digital’ store in April 2007 and its first and India’s largest hypermarket ‘Reliance Mart’ in Ahmedabad in August 2007. This year, RRL has also launched its first few specialty stores for apparel (Reliance Trends), footwear (Reliance Footprints), jewellery (Reliance Jewels), books, music and other lifestyle products (Reliance Timeout), auto accessories and service format (Reliance Autozone) and also an initiative in the health and wellness business through ‘Reliance Wellness’. In each of these store formats, RRL is offering a unique set of products and services at a value price point that has not been available so far to the Indian consumer. Overall, RRL is well positioned to rapidly expand its existing network of 590 stores which operate in 57 cities.

During the year, RRL also focused on building strong relationships in the agri-business value chain and has commenced marketing fruits, vegetables and staples that the company sources directly to wholesalers and institutional customers. RRL provides its customers with high quality produce that has better shelf life and more consistent quality than was available earlier. RRL has made significant progress in establishing state-of-the-art staples processing centres and expects to make them operational by May 2008.

Through the year, RRL also expanded its supply chain infrastructure. The Company is fully geared to meet the requirements of its rapidly growing store network in an efficient manner.

Recognizing that strategic alliances are going to be a key driver to its retail business, in FY 2007-08, RRL established key joint ventures with international partners in apparel, optical and office products businesses. Further, RRL will continue to seek synergistic opportunities with other international players as well. This year, RRL will continue its focus on rapid expansion of the existing and other new formats across India.