While we have seen that the likes of Amazon and others are running away with all the sales when it comes to online orders, we see that the competition is also ramping up. However, it was seen that the online competition in the e-commerce segment for the Indian market was almost stagnant for a long time. We currently have the likes of Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart which are operating in the market. However, the reports regarding a challenger platform from none other than Asia’s richest businessman was said to be coming. We are talking about Mukesh Ambani who is also the owner of India’s disrupting 4G telecom operator named Reliance Jio.
As far as Mukesh Ambani and Jio are concerned, they have successfully penetrated inside the Indian telecom market by giving away data for free at first but later charging its customers which was a very clever marketing tactic and one which can only be applied by someone who has a lot of cash reserves. Now, Mukesh Ambani has started to test a pilot program for his online shopping portal named JioMart which is similar to Amazon and Flipkart in some ways.
While this is also an e-commerce shopping portal, it is currently available only in Mumbai and other surrounding neighbourhoods as per Bloomberg’s report. Also known is the fact that JioMart currently only delivers grocery items to the customers. Reliance has labelled its new store as ‘desk ki apni dukan’ or ‘the nation’s new store’ which means that they have plans for a full-fledged shopping portal down the line.
At the moment, JioMart’s pilot website says that it is a “new world for grocery shopping” but we believe that it will turn out to be much more than that in the coming months. Also, JioMart is offering a no questions asked return policy which is not currently offered by anyone else in its segment which could well turn out to be a deciding factor.
