Reliance Industries Limited(RIL) is in the global news for the last year due to two of its subsidiaries: Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio. These two startups are competing with the global players. Recently, Deloitte has released a report about the top retailers in the world. The report includes Reliance Retail as the second fastest-growing retailer in the world. Overall, it ranks 53rd among the top 250 retailers of the world.
Reliance Retail Features in top 250 Global Retailers
Reliance Retail is the only Indian retail company that found a place in a recent list of top 250 global retailers. The report also reveals that the Indian retailer is the second-fastest-growing retailer in the world.
As per Deloitte report, Reliance Retail ranks 53rd among the top 250 global retailers. The Indian retailer saw an improvement in its overall rank compared to last year’s 56th rank. But, in last year’s ranking, it occupied the first rank among the fastest-growing retailers in the world.
US firm Walmart, Amazon.com, Costco Wholesale Corporation, and Schwarz Group of Germany occupy 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rank respectively in the recent global retailer ranking of 2021.
Walmart was also ranked first in the previous year. Amazon.com improved its rank from third to second in 2021, whereas Costco slipped from second to the third rank in 2021.
Overall, US retailers dominate the top 10 rankings with seven entries. UK’s Tesco PLC ranks tenth in the global retailer list of 2021. Other US retailers in the top 10 include The Kroger Co (ranked 5th), Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc (6th), and CVS Health Corporation (ranked 9th). Germany’s Aldi Einkauf GmbH & Co oHG and Aldi International Services GmbH & Co. oHG is placed at 8th position.
Further Details about Reliance Retail
This is the 4th consecutive year for Reliance Retail to feature in the list of Global Powers of Retailing and the World’s Fastest Retailers.
Talking about the Reliance Retail growth, Deloitte said:
“Reliance Retail, last year’s Fastest 50 leader, dropped to second place. The company recorded YoY growth of 41.8 per cent, driven primarily by a 13.1 per cent increase in the number of stores in its consumer electronics, fashion and lifestyle and grocery retail chains, to 11,784 stores across 7,000+ towns and cities in India at fiscal year-end (FY20).”
The firm has also adopted the E-commerce platform to grow further in B2C and B2B markets.
How online presence will help Reliance Retail? Deloitte explained this point in detail in its recent report. It said:
“The company is partnering with WhatsApp to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s digital commerce business on the JioMart platform using WhatsApp and to support small businesses on WhatsApp.”
It further added:
“Reliance Retail acquired the 29 stores of Shri Kannan Departmental Store at the end of FY2019, and in August 2020 announced it would acquire Future Group’s retail, wholesale and logistics units for $3.4 billion.”
Right now, the Future Group deal is in legal trouble. Once it is approved, it will help Reliance Retail to double its store space.
To strengthen its operations further, Reliance Retail has acquired Vitalic Health and Netmeds in 2020. Last year, It has also secured a 96% stake in UrbanLadder. The Indian retailer is also competing with global goods makers in India.
The report also talked about the Covid-19 effects on the retail industry. Deloitte said:
“On the positive side, the distribution of vaccines for Covid-19 was underway, offering the promise that, sometime later in the year, the negative impact of the virus could abate significantly. On the negative side, the virus continued to threaten economic stability, especially in those parts of the world where it was still prevalent and threatened to be a problem elsewhere if new and virulent strains of the virus were spread widely”.
Recently, Reliance Retail became the 4th Indian firm that crossed the $100 billion market cap. Currently, India is the most affected country by Covid-19’s second wave. It will slow down the progress of Reliance Retail. How much will it affect the retail industry overall? Only time will answer this question.
