Reliance Retail joins quick commerce fray, offers free delivery
Reliance Retail is entering the quick commerce space, giving a tough competition to established players like Zepto, Zomato's Blinkit and Swiggy's Instamart. The company has already started providing these services in select areas of Navi Mumbai and Bengaluru via its e-commerce platform JioMart. At first, it will focus on selling grocery items from its nearly 3,000 retail stores across India.
Expansion and delivery strategy
Reliance Retail plans to expand its quick commerce venture across India by the end of this month. The company plans to deliver most orders within 10-15 minutes, and the rest within 30 minutes. For this, it will use its logistics service Grab for order fulfillment. Unlike other quick commerce operators, Reliance doesn't plan to set up dark stores or neighborhood warehouses.
Reliance Retail's customer-centric approach
In a bid to attract customers, Reliance won't charge any delivery fee, platform fee or surge fee, irrespective of the order value. The company also plans to offer a wider range of products by linking its entire store inventory to the quick commerce business. This way, it will be able to offer customers 10,000-12,000 stock keeping units (SKUs), more than its competitors.
Reliance Retail's future plans and challenges
Reliance Retail hopes to eventually serve 1,150 cities across 5,000 pin codes where it operates grocery stores. The company has changed its delivery method for JioMart orders from scheduled delivery taking 1-2 days to quick commerce where one delivery bike or cycle will deliver one order. However, analysts say not having dark stores could be a challenge in delivering orders within 30 minutes in big cities with heavy traffic during peak hours.
