Reliance announces e-commerce foray plans; to challenge Amazon, Flipkart

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries, announced the conglomerate’s plans to foray into the e-commerce space while speaking at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit yesterday (January 18, 2019). 

In his address at the Summit, Ambani said that Jio and Reliance Retail would launch this unique “New Commerce platform”. This mega mission for India will first be rolled out in Gujarat and is aimed at empowering 12 lakh small retailers and shopkeepers in Gujarat – which are part of over 3 crore community in India. 

The e-commerce venture is part of the five initiatives that Ambani announced that would align with Gujarat’s future developmental model. He added that so far, Reliance had invested nearly Rs 3 lakh crore in the state of Gujarat. 

It may be recalled that in July 2018, Reliance Retail, the retail chain from Reliance Industries, had started to sell household electronics products as well as smartphones through its online platform. 

Speaking further at the Summit, Ambani called data as the “new oil” and “new wealth” in this new world and called for the industry to collectively launch a new movement against data colonisation. 

“India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people - and not by corporates, especially global corporations. For India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, we will have to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India – in other words, Indian wealth back to every Indian,” he affirmed.