RIL invests ₹7,600 cr on acquisitions in first three qtrs to strengthen retail arm

Industry:    2022-01-24

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has spent more than ₹7,600 crore over the past nine months of this fiscal towards investing in and acquiring assets to strengthen its retail business, according to Gaurav Jain, head, strategy and business development, Reliance Retail.

“We have spent close to ₹7,600 crore in the first nine months in investing and acquiring assets and investing in capabilities that will help us reach out to our customers and offer better quality of products and also improved service delivery,” Jain said.

Last quarter, RIL’s retail arm, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) acquired a 52% equity stake in Ritika Pvt. Ltd, which owns Ritu Kumar, Label Ritu Kumar, RI Ritu Kumar, aarké, and Ritu Kumar Home and Living. This includes the 35% stake of Everstone Group in the company that RRVL bought from the private equity firm.

It also bought 40% in Manish Malhotra’s eponymous brand.

“The investments and assets acquired in the last nine months include Kalanikethan, which is a leading saris and ethnic wear retailer and Jaisuryas is a regional grocery chain in southern India, which is going to help us fill up gaps in some of the smaller markets in the southern markets. It also includes Dunzo, a leading last mile delivery and quick commerce player, which will help us further strengthen our delivery capabilities to our customers,” added Jain.

Reliance Retail on Friday reported a 23.4% year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in its consolidated net profit at ₹2,259 crore for the October-December quarter of FY22.

It also reported an all-time high revenue and Ebitda in Q3FY22. Consolidated gross revenue for the quarter was up 52.5% y-o-y to ₹57,714 for Q3FY22.

Gross revenue from consumption baskets excluding petro and connectivity grew by 90% over the previous year to ₹33,714 crore in the quarter under review.

During the quarter, the business added 837 stores taking the total count to 14,412 stores and 2.3 million sq. ft of warehousing space to bolster its service capabilities.

JP Morgan Equity Research said it values RIL’s O2C business at $65 billion, and retail at $98 billion with a JioMart value of $23 billion.

The business has also launched JioMart Digital this quarter where it aims to work with merchants across geographies, onboarding them. The focus, the company said, is on onboarding a wider set of merchants and servicing them across the country.

“On the new commerce side, the focus has been on onboarding merchants. This has been a period where we have 10x growth of merchants between last year and this year. We are continuously investing in supply chain infrastructure so that we are able to serve them better,” Jain said.

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