India's Richest Man is Ready To Take on Amazon and Walmart

As Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart spend billions to make a dent in India's retail market and reel from recent regulatory hurdles, the two companies have stumbled upon a new challenge: Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man. From a report: Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio, two subsidiaries of Ambani's Reliance Industries, said they have soft-launched JioMart, their e-commerce venture that works closely with neighborhood stores, in parts of the state of Maharashtra -- Navi Mumbai, Kalyan and Thane. The e-commerce venture, which is being marketed as "Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan" (Hindi for new store of the country), currently offers a catalog of 50,000 grocery items and promises "free and express delivery." In an email to Reliance Jio users, the two aforementioned subsidiaries that are working together on the e-commerce venture said they plan to expand the service to many parts of India in coming months. The joint venture has also urged Jio subscribers to sign up to JioMart to access introductory offers. A Reliance spokesperson declined to share more. The soft launch this week comes months after Ambani, who runs Reliance Industries -- India's largest industrial house -- said that he wants to service tens of millions of retailers and store owners across the country. If there is anyone in India who is positioned to compete with heavily backed Amazon and Walmart, it's Ambani. Reliance Retail, which was founded in 2006, is the largest retailer in the country by revenue. It serves more than 3.5 million customers each week through its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 Indian cities and towns. Reliance Jio is the second largest telecom operator in India, with more than 360 million subscribers.

Re:

[sonamchauhan]

Ugh, stop shitting on this site.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a first - so far, the presence of Indian companies in Europe and America is, by and large, negligible.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I definitely disagree. Wipro, Infosys, Tata, and to a lesser extent IBM are the place to go to for IT work, where company C-levels either have them, or they want them. You can't do anything in IT without the Indian consulting companies, and you cannot find highly trained, certified employees outside of those world class companies.

There is a reason why companies outsource not just their IT house, but their devs to them, and that is because they are world class, and even with their coding quality, they are usually cheaper than some hack domestically.

If India went away, the world's business infrastructure would collapse on itself.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up -- HILARIOUS.

Re:

[iggymanz]

What rubbish, the lowest watt bulbs I've ever had the misfortune to work were from those supposed "world class companies", they were "white paper diploma mill heads", all theory but couldn't find their ass with both hands and so the rest of us had to do the real work.

As for IBM consultants, their morons couldn't even reproduce the Websphere clusters my employer needed more of after jerking around for a couple months. I was hired and had that stuff up in days.

You are shilling for people that are all about "

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

ArcelorMittal has a presence in Europe, too.

Re:

[Hodr]

On a more serious note, Mahindra Mahindra is making decent inroads into other markets for their tractors. The three closest tractor sales/service locations to my family farm in the middle-of-nowhere Mississippi all sell them.

Re:

[HiThere]

But do they let you repair your own tractor?

Inherited wealth, not self made

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The brothers Mukesh and Anil inherited the wealth from their father Dhirubhai Ambani. One of them is in serious credit trouble skating to bankruptcy bailed out by the other brother. Much of their success is due to having so much money to enter into businesses with barriers of entry, buying political clout etc. They are not the shrewd businessmen of Dhirubhai class.

Dhirubhai was a self made man, saw the difference in price between silver and gold in India and Middle east while working as a low level worker. Instinctively did artbitrage trades without any formal training and built up his wealth. Then got good political connections and exploited them well.

Rich Indian oligarch made wealth by buying political favors is correct but does injustice to Dhirubhai, the businessman. Corrupt politicians were available for sale for all rich people. Most rich Indian oligarchs went for easy picking short range profits, Dhirubhai placed his bribes well, fruits well into the future, the politicians selling the favors did not think that far ahead and so they sold them cheaply.

Walmart and Amazon need not fear the scions. The founder of the dynasty would have given them a run for their money, but these guys not so much.

Re: Inherited wealth, not self made

[BiggerIsBetter]

Good point about being self made, but the comments about placing bribes well leaves me cold on these Indian success stories. Show me someone who succeeded without being corrupt AF.

Re: Inherited wealth, not self made

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Infosys Narayana Murthi is one I recall. Some family owned conglomerates are well managed, though not rags to riches story. America too had its robber baron days, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, trusts and cartels. Looks like India is just getting there now.

Re:

[timeOday]

But according to the summary, didn't the sons build the nation's largest retailer after the death of their father?

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Sounds like they will do extremely well in the US. It's a well worn path they are on.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Article title missing two words at end "in India".

[denpun]

India's Richest Man is Ready To Take on Amazon and Walmart "in India"

Amazon and Walmart already have a presence in India.
The linked article is just implying that Amazon and Walmart have been mostly unchallenged by other conglomerates and will now face competition by Ambani's Jio which is a local company.

I don't think they are thinking about outside India. (Yet).

Graft in India

[aaronb1138]

"reel from recent regulatory hurdles,"

Walmart has tried to get into India, most notably helping the nutrition issues with produce rotting in warehouses because logistics suck.

At the end of the day, Walmart pulled out because they couldn't deal with trying to deal with or standardize graft. There are zero regulatory hurdles in India if you pay off the right amount at each tier.

Re:

[denpun]

.....Walmart pulled out.....

They still have a presence in India via investment in Flipkart.

  https://techcrunch.com/2018/08... [techcrunch.com]

Back groud of Mukesh Ambani's current business

[srinivas_k_100]

Mukesh Ambani is not only the richest man in India. He owns reliance retail which has brick and mortar stores in thousands of towns in India. He has pan India 4G telecom services with 360 million captive customers (Reliance Jio in just over 3 years) and increasing. They are now used to his free pan India unlimited talk time and dirt cheap data ( you get free unlimited talk time and 1.5 GB 4 G data per day for 3 months for less than 10$). He also has started rolling out fiber to home for internet/smart TV

Corrupt

[NewYork]

Ambani is Corrupt;
"Behind every great fortune there is Crime" --Balzac
Please endorse https://change.org/p/13002798 [change.org]