Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail together going after Amazon and Flipkart

Asia’s Richest Man Outlines His Plan to Take on Amazon in India

“Jio and Reliance Retail will launch a unique new commerce platform to empower and enrich our 12 lakh small retailers and shopkeepers in Gujarat,” the Reliance chairman said at an event in the state on Friday. Twelve lakh is equivalent to 1.2 million.

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As the initiative expands, Reliance Industries will look to enlist more neighborhood mom-and-pop shops -- which make up about 90 percent of India’s retail landscape -- as distribution and delivery centers for some products that will be available on its mobile platform, the people said. The company’s wholesale stores will help stock these mom-and-pop operations, they said.

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Reliance then plans to launch an e-commerce platform more directly tied to its Reliance Retail stores and to the neighborhood stores, according to the people.

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They are going to give a POS device/app which would give discounts on Jio Money payments. Then they will place some products in neighborhood stores and deliver rest via their logistics network within 24 hours. Basically the kirana store guys will act as affiliates. And later on the same stores will be listed as delivery/pickup points at Reliance Detail's unified online store. More or less like Storeking.

Grofers had a similar model earlier.

Source

The device is available for free. But ₹3000 security deposit is applicable like JioPhone. MDR for transactions upto ₹2000 on debit cards and Jio Money is 0%, 4G data and 56 days complimentary data is available. No monthly fees for POS. For transactions above ₹2000, 0.4% MDR is there. If the merchant uses Jio Payments Bank Current account, MDR will be waived off and settlement will happen faster. The POS device is Android based. Supports NFC also.

So what does Reliance gain by offering stuff for free and give discount coupons??; as Mota Bhai himself told "data is the new oil".

is Paytm completely free for retailers?

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right. the last remaining kiryana store in my local market finally gave up and got Paytm this week. they did not get anything after demonetization. only got PhonePe few weeks ago. and today i saw paytm at their counter. solves one problem.

Paytm QR code is charged at 0% for small retailers. After ₹50,000 pm it's charged at 1.99%+ GST. Paytm also has POS device and apps now. Also resell option like Meesho and GlowRoad.

Reliance is essentially paying for customer data in the form of small coupons and to push their private labels.

Is it inexpensive for retailers?; Probably for the small ones with very limited transactions. Once you cross a certain volume, nothing beats proper desktop based billing terminals with bank supplied POS swipe machines. One can accept all cards, BHIM UPI, Bharat QR, NFC and myriad of wallets through POS devices given by banks like HDFC or Karnataka. Monthly rent is not there, and MDR is more or less same.

I really don't understand how people can run a store with such small touch screen POS swipe machines. Not at all user friendly and rugged.

the local store i mentioned above is using Ring Ring - Save Money On The Go – Apps on Google Play program for cashbacks. he keeps a smartphone with the app running all the time which i assume uses Google Pay style connectivity.