Reliance plans to set up one-stop shop Jio Hubs to tap local markets

Mukesh Ambani-led RIL is planning to set up Jio Hubs, a one-stop shop, for all consumer items from electronics to groceries, to tap local market.

The company is aiming to create a hybrid model of commerce through Joi Hubs by leveraging Reliance retail physical store and Reliance Jio Digital infrastructure to boost sales in smaller cities.

Ambani has marked this project as a game changer as it will help Reliance get big volumes. Two months ago in Reliance annual meet, he had emphasised that there is a huge opportunity for online to offline commerce platform.

“Reliance plans to build around 800 such Reliance Jio Hubs which will sell all consumer items under Reliance," Mint quoted a person aware of the development as saying.

While the final draft of the plan is still not made public, Jio Hubs may work experience centres with additional inventory and warehouse facility.

After Jio GigaFiber broadband services, Jio Hubs is where the company is focusing on. Through Jio Hubs, Ambani aims to bring together telecom, retail, and e-commerce.

At present, Reliance Retail has 7,500 physical stores and 5000 Jio Points across 4,400 cities in the country. Whereas Jio enjoys subscriber-base of 215 million. In space of two years, Jio has come out as one big player in the telecom sector. Jio’s revenue rose to Rs 8109 crore surpassing that of Vodafone India which had recently posted Rs 7,860 crore in the fiscal first quarter.

Through Jio Hubs, the RIL plans to develop a synergy between Reliance Retail and Jio. Reliance is also aiming to cover 99 per cent of India’s population through all possible segments of the Internet.

According to eMarketer, the online retail market in India has more than tripled in the last 3 years, it is expected to contribute to 2.9% of the total retail sales in 2018.