Reliance Retail: The Business Model That Paved the Way 

Dominating the Market: Start-ups Centric

Reliance as a whole is infamous for how it takes over the market, and that is by targeting and acquiring start-ups and businesses by the bucket-full. While the RIL does have stakes in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retail, and telecommunications that come under the ambit of its own brand name in different branch-offs like Reliance Trends, Reliance Digital and so on, a lot of its success is attributed to the heavy absorption of other businesses which are brought under the brand umbrella.

Since the majority of these businesses already have a certain level of market penetration and working business models of their own, Reliance merely provides somewhat of an upgrade to that using its brand identity, reach and funds to rapidly overtake the market in that particular segment using that business. A good way to envision that tactic is to look at these companies as the tool or vehicle that Reliance uses to expand its reach in the various industries. It is an effective and smart model.

To that end, RIL has some noteworthy start-up acquisitions such as Embibe, Fynd, Grab, Haptik, Reverie, Saavn, Tesseract, Den Networks and Hathway Cable & Datacom Ltd., Hamleys, Netmeds, Asteria Aerospace, NowFloats Technologies, Radisys, Big Bazaar, Balaji Telefilms and Eros International that make up the ranks of the mainstream market penetration formula.

Reliance Retail is a subsidiary that takes this method a step further and currently stands, allegedly, as the biggest retailer in India with over 12,201 stores across 7,000+ cities across India with many of the subsidiaries of retail like Reliance Fresh, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Digital, and Reliance Trends having arrived in most urban areas of Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.

With this angle, Reliance Trends covers everything from groceries to fashion, footwear, luxury goods like jewellery, e-commerce and even electronics which gives the subsidiary company a wide reach and a great deal of diversity for potential customers to choose from. This feeds the funnel in a very crucial manner.

On the other hand, the fact that they have tapped into the start-up market makes for somewhat of a symbiotic relationship. As Reliance gets the rapid expansion it seeks, small businesses and business owners have the added advantage of being included under the brand umbrella which pulls in a lot of foot traffic for their brick-and-mortar stores as well as their online platforms for those who primarily feature there. Given that India is home to the third-largest start-up ecosystem after the United States and China, it explains how this company has climbed the ranks to the top over the years. 

Reliance Retail: Bettering the Lives Campaign

In a unique approach, Reliance Retail has included farmers in its marketing and growth strategy. When you go to the grocery store, you expect fresh vegetables, fruits and other agrarian products for your day-to-day needs such as the wheat that makes up a fresh loaf of bread or the onions you need to cook every day. The point being, we all want the freshest and most authentic farm to table foods, and that is exactly what the ‘Bettering the Lives’ initiative is all about.

Through this expansion campaign, Reliance Retail partners all of its grocery stores with farmers and small producers to bring that farm-to-table approach into reality. This plays to the strengths of the brand being a customer-centric one and at the same time brings these producers to the forefront of the retail business and provides them with some much-needed growth and support as well.

This hyperlocal approach helps not only bring a diversity factor to the brand’s products but aids in making the shopping experience a much more customised one since everything is localised as it should be when it comes to groceries. With that said, this effectively covers the hyperlocal aspect of the company’s reach.

Marketing and Promotion: An Ace Up the Sleeve

Much of Reliance Retail’s publicity comes from the efforts of the parent company RIL and as such, it is a well-known brand. How do they do it you ask? The answer to that lies in the company’s ability to identify what the customer wants and where their attention is. As Indians, our primary pass-time in this country is Cricket, a sport we are known to obsess over, to the point that it penetrates the vast majority of our national mainstream news and media outlets. Reliance saw this and seized the opportunity.

In January of 2008, RIL and CEO Mukesh Ambani acquired the Mumbai Indians team and the accompanying franchise. This proved an instrument of monumental proportions as the brand’s name skyrocketed from there in the public’s eye.

Additionally, Reliance also roped in the Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan for its Reliance Telecom branch which appealed to the star-power aspect of the marketing plan. With so much celebrity and sports clout giving it the wind under its wings, the company managed to garner a lot of eyes on the business side of things, which greatly boosted its revenue across the subsidiary brands including Reliance Retail. Things were taken a step further when Reliance subsidiary JioMart, which comes under the retail wing, partnered with Facebook-owned WhatsApp to push social media presence for the brand. With this kind of 360-degree perception and marketing execution, supplemented by aggressive brand image building it is no wonder why it has become a household name.