All You Need to Know About Reliance Retail and How It Cemented Position as India’s Largest Retailer

Reliance gradually widened its horizon across segments such as electronics, fashion and the cash-and-carry businesses. While Reliance Digital, the consumer electronic retail chain was launched in 2007, the company ventured into fashion and the wholesale cash-n-carry segments in 2008 and 2011, respectively, through Reliance Trends and Reliance Market. By 2011, Reliance Retail had achieved $1 billion in sales.

Growth of the giant

By 2014, Reliance became the largest retailer, surpassing Future Group in terms of revenue. Future Group’s overall retail revenues totalled up to Rs 13,666 crore on an annualised basis for the financial year ended March 2014, at a time when Reliance Retail’s revenue had shot up to Rs 14,496 crore.

Around the same time, Reliance tried to test the e-commerce space with the launch of an online grocery store, reliancefreshdirect.com to deliver groceries in Mumbai. In 2016, it made a full-fledged entry into e-commerce with the launch of curated fashion platform ajio.com. The online commerce space had already heated up with millions of dollars of venture capital money flowing into India.