India’s richest man is ready to take on Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is ready to take on Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart.

Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio, two subsidiaries of Ambani’s Reliance Industries, said they have soft launched JioMart, their e-commerce venture, in parts of the state of Maharashtra — Mumbai, Kalyan and Thane.

The e-commerce venture, which is being marketed as “Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan” (Hindi for new sore for the country), currently offers a catalog of 50,000 grocery items and promises “free and express delivery.”

In an email to employees, accessed by TechCrunch, the two subsidiaries that are working together on the e-commerce venture, said they plan to scale the service to many parts of India in coming months. A Reliance spokesperson declined to comment.

The soft launch this week comes months after Ambani, who runs Reliance Industries — India’s largest industrial house — had said at a conference that he wants to service tens of millions of retailers and store owners across the country.

If there is anyone in India who is positioned to compete with Amazon and Walmart, it is him. Reliance Retail, which was founded in 2006, is the largest retailer in the country by revenue. It serves more than 3.5 million customers each week through its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 Indian cities and towns.

Reliance Jio is the largest telecom operator in India with more than 350 million subscribers. The 4G-only carrier, which launched commercial operations in the second half of 2016, disrupted the incumbent telecom operation in the country by offering bulk of data and voice calls at little to no charge for an extended period of time.

More to follow…

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