Reliance could digitise five million kirana stores by 2023, report says

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
May 9, 2019

Reliance Industries Limited’s plan to digitise India’s kirana stores could see the country’s digitised store base increase from 15,000 currently to five million in 2023, a new Bank of America Merrill Lynch report has said.

On May 7, Bank of America Merrill Lynch released a report stating that RIL is expected to bring millions of kirana stores online in the coming three years. “Overall, we expect RIL to help expand the current 15,000 digitised store base to over five million stores by 2023,” DSP Merrill Lynch research analysts Sachin Salgaonkar and Sukriti Bansal told IndiaRetailing about the report. 

“We believe that with the RIL’s entry, we could see an increase in merchant adoptability, as the price points will likely come down (RIL’s current one-time deposit is Rs 3,000) and reach should expand,” read the report. 

RIL currently runs over 10,000 Reliance Retail outlets across the country and is gearing up to launch an online-to-offline platform. As part of the launch, the business aims to bring on board a large number of kirana stores which is expected to lead to an organisation of the market. The business has recently sped up the removal of many of the fashion brands it manages from other e-commerce platforms ahead of its own launch.