Ambani takes on Amazon

MUMBAI: Reliance Industries Ltd plans to take on the likes of Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt in retail by creating a platform that combines online and conventional shopping.

Billionaire chairman Mukesh Ambani outlined the plan at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting here yesterday.

“The effort will involve the group’s Reliance Retail Ltd and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd businesses,’’ he said. “The latter will also introduce a fibre-based broadband service on Aug 15.’’

Global retail powerhouses like Amazon and Walmart have been investing in India’s retail industry, where e-commerce sales could more than double to $72 billion by 2022 from $32.7 billion in 2018, research firm eMarketer estimated.

“The retail-to-refining conglomerate is looking for growth in e-commerce after spending as much as 2.5 trillion rupees ($36.3 billion) in setting up mobile and fiber broadband infrastructure,’’ Ambani said.

“The platform will use augmented reality, holographs and virtual reality to create an “immersive shopping experience,” he said, without giving a timeline or financial targets.

“The service will be available to small merchants as well, enabling them to do everything that large enterprises and large ec-ommerce players are able to do.”

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said in May that it would acquire a 77% stake in Flipkart Group for $16 billion, leaving the remainder to Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and other shareholders.

Other news from the shareholder meeting:

Jio aims to introduce fiber broadband in 1,100 cities nationwide

The e-commerce venture will leverage 350 million footfalls in Reliance Retail stores, 215 million Jio subscribers, and the target of 50 million fibre broadband homes and 30 million small merchants

Carrier has introduced JioPhone2, an upgraded version of the feature phone offered for an initial price of 2,999 rupees. The upgrade allows access to YouTube, Whatsapp and Facebook.