It is not just the revenues in which the retail arm of Mukesh Ambani led-Reliance Industries is a leading name;but Reliance Retail is also the leader in almost all the categories it operates.
Maximum number of stores in different categories
Its electronics and consumer durables store, Reliance Digital became the largest retail chain in India. Reliance Digital has around 1,000 outlets across the country. Croma that is owned by Tata has 97 stores while the second in the list Videocon’s Nexthave around 800 outlets. Last Friday, Reliance Industries announced the numbers in the financial results for January, 2015 to March, 2015.
Reliance Digital Xpress Mini, with crossing the 800 mark has become the largest chain with maximum number of stores for mobile phones. It has surpassed Essar’s The Mobile Store which has 800 stores in India.In the category of cash and carry stores, again Reliance Retail is the leader. Since the last four years, Reliance Retail has set up 43 stores. These are known as Reliance Market stores. Around 1,500,000 people have registered themselves as the members of Reliance Market across the country. These include grocery stores, small organizations and hotels.
Walmart which is based in the United States has set up 20 outlets since seven years and Metro with its base in Germany, operates 17 wholesale stores since the last 10 years.
The next category, in which Reliance Industries leads is department stores. Its 200 outlets of department stores are known as Reliance Trends. They sell around 1.5 lakhs of garments every day. It is thus termed as the biggest fashion retailer in India. The other stores like Shoppers Stop which is owned by the Raheja Group operates 75 outlets and Pantaloons which is owned by Aditya Birla Group operates around 100 stores.
Its retail footwear business, Reliance Footprint, operates 200 stores across 100 cities. During the quarter’s end in March, 2015, Reliance Retail stated that it runs 2,621 outlets in 200 cities of India. The stores occupy a total space of 12.5 million sq. ft. In this financial year alone, Reliance Industries added 930 outlets amounting to 0.9 million sq. ft. of operating space. Varied sectors of Reliance Retail posted like to like growth. This means, from stores in operation for more than a year, the growth was around 17%.
Revenue of Reliance Retail
In 2013, Reliance Industries has projected a significant growth in the number of its employees involved in the retail business. From 35,000, in 2013, Reliance Retail set a target of making it 120,000 by 2018.
In the financial year 2014 – 2015, Reliance Retail posted profits twice more than the previous year. Its revenues also increased by 21.2%.The profit before depreciation interest and taxes (PBDIT) increased to Rs. 784 crores as against Rs. 363 crores in the financial year 2013- 2014. The revenues also increased to Rs. 17,640 crores.