Reliance to acquire several brands to build ₹50k cr retail business: Report

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance is set to challenge foreign behemoths like Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and “become a house of brands” by acquiring several small grocery and non-food brands in the next six months, according to a report.

According to a Reuters report, that quoted sources, Reliance, India’s largest retailer, plans to build a portfolio of 50 to 60 grocery, household and personal care brands within six months and is hiring an army of distributors to take them to mom-and-pop stores and bigger retail outlets across the nation.

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The plan is part of the ongoing expansion of JioMart’s e-commerce operations. The consumer goods push under a vertical named Reliance Retail Consumer Brands will come on top of Ambani’s brick-and-mortar store network of more than 2,000 grocery outlets, the report said.

Reliance is in the final stages of negotiations with around 30 popular niche local consumer brands to fully acquire them or form joint venture partnerships for sales, it added quoting a source.

Though the total investment for the acquisition plans is still not revealed, a source told the news agency that Reliance had set a goal to achieve ₹50,000 crore ($6.5 billion) of annual sales from the business within five years.

“Reliance will become a house of brands. This is an inorganic play,” said the person.

According to one of the sources, Reliance is already in talks with Sosyo, a soft-drink brand of a nearly 100-year-old local company, Hajoori, based in Gujarat. However, the company’s director, Aliasgar Abbas Hajoori was quoted as saying, “We don’t comment on speculations.”

One LinkedIn job ad by Reliance stated it had short-listed staples, personal care, beverages, and chocolates as categories for initial launches, and was hiring mid-level sales managers for the business in more than 100 cities and small towns. Among the main tasks of such executives will be to appoint distributors and manage merchants, the ad stated, according to the report.