Electronic goods: Reliance Retail plans own brand

Reliance Retail, the subsidiary of petrochemicals giant Reliance Industries, will soon launch its own label of consumer electronics goods to complement its retail appliance stores - Reliance Digital - for tapping the country's $5.6 billion durables market.

The company would be investing over Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) over the next 3-4 years for setting up 150 such stores, the first of which was unveiled in the National Capital Region on Tuesday.

"Reliance will come out with its private label of consumer durables products... that is definitely in the strategy after we open 4-5 stores," Reliance Retail Ltd president and CEO (consumer durables, IT and telecom) Ajay Baijal told PTI. Reliance Digital stores would sell everything from TV sets, home theatre, refrigerator, cooking range, dishwasher to computers and mobile phones from across brands.

"The stores, typically spread over 15,000-30,000 sq.ft, will have a wide assortment of products to cater to the tastes and requirement of customers," Baijal said.

The domestic consumer electronics market, which is expanding by 10 per cent annually, is dominated by South Korean brands such LG and Samsung and Japan's Sony. But they have tough competition from homegrown names like Videocon and BPL.

The first store, located at Shipra Mall in Ghaziabad, would be followed by another pilot outlet in NCR and 3-4 more in the country's south in the coming days. Baijal said the stores, which would be set up at an investment of Rs 4-7 crore (Rs 40-70 million) each, would also offer post-sales services. 

"The prices would be most competitive and if any customer finds a cheaper product in the market within 30 days of purchase, we would not hesitate to match that offer," Reliance Retail mentor Kamal Nanawati said.

Reliance Digital store, which comes five months after the company unveiled its fresh food format outlets, would function as a one-stop-shop for all electronic and IT needs, Baijal said.

He, however, did not elaborate on the plans for the private label -- whether it would be manufactured or sourced.

Notably, Reliance Fresh that was launched last year stocks the shelves with its own label of groceries – Reliance Staple.

"We would offering a host of value-added services like software downloads for our IT customers and airtime and accessories for mobile users," Baijal said.

When fully rolled out, the stores would be spread across 70 cities and all of them would offer 'RelianceresQ' -- pre-sales and post-sales support services.

Reliance Digital will also be offering customers RelianceOne, a common membership and loyalty programme across all its formats, which means users would be able to redeem points earned on purchases.

Other formats of Reliance Retail like supermarkets and hypermarkets are due for launch in the April-June quarter. Reliance Industries had last year announced an investment of Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion) for the retail business, which it hopes would help the company earn over Rs 90,000 crore (Rs 900 billion) revenues in the next five years.

Industry estimates suggest India's retail market is worth $320 billion, of which organised retail accounts for $7.5 billion and expected to grow to $21.5 billion by 2010.