JioMart’s Third Act: Reliance’s retail muscle meets quick commerce

Reliance Retail did not respond to Mint’s request for comments.

Third act

Reliance Retail’s first attempt at online grocery delivery was built around WhatsApp. In 2020, Reliance Retail began piloting JioMart orders through the Meta-owned messaging platform, allowing customers to browse products and place orders with neighbourhood stores.

The experiment did find an audience. In September 2023, JioMart said monthly orders on WhatsApp had grown seven-fold from a year earlier, and that it had seen a six-fold month-on-month rise in new customers.

WhatsApp, though, was merely a convenient ordering interface layered on Reliance’s retail network rather than a hyperlocal order fulfilment engine, according to a former Reliance Retail employee who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We knew WhatsApp had its limitations. It could help with taking orders, but it wasn’t exactly sustainable. Mind you, quick-commerce platforms like Blinkit and Zepto had started taking off by then, so a rapid overhaul was necessary. The commitment to JioMart was always there, the question was figuring out the right model,” this person said.

In April 2021, Reliance hired Sandeep Varaganti to lead JioMart. Varaganti came with an unusual vantage point for the job. Having held senior roles at Amazon India and Prione Business Services, he had seen the digital-commerce business from inside two very different models. Prione, a joint venture between Amazon India and Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s investment firm Catamaran Ventures, helped businesses sell on e-commerce platforms.

Under Varaganti, Reliance Retail tried another route in 2022, investing $200 million in hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo. The idea was to plug Dunzo’s last-mile capabilities into Reliance’s retail network. However, within a year, Dunzo’s liquidity position worsened and it was forced into layoffs, emergency fundraising, and salary delays. By the end of 2023, several board members and co-founders had exited. In its 2024–25 annual report, Reliance said it had written off its investment in Dunzo. The partnership never became the quick-commerce engine Reliance had hoped for.

By then, the market was quickly advancing. In 2022, food-delivery platform Zomato Ltd (now Eternal Ltd) acquired grocery-delivery platform Blinkit, then called Grofers, for ₹4,447 crore, in a sign of how seriously internet companies were beginning to take the quick-commerce category. Blinkit had already pivoted towards 10-minute delivery and was racing to scale its dark-store network.

A year later, Zepto, barely two years old at the time, raised $200 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, becoming India’s first unicorn startup of 2023. The funding came despite a broader slowdown in startup capital, underlining investor conviction in quick commerce.

India’s quick-commerce GMV, spanning categories including grocery, electronics, and apparel, is projected to rise from $11.3 billion in fiscal year 2026 (FY26) to about $60 billion by FY31, according to Anand Rathi Research. GMV, or gross merchandise value, a key digital commerce metric, is the total value of all goods sold on a platform without factoring in discounts or returns.

“The momentum in quick commerce was simply too strong for Reliance Retail to ignore. Once consumers started changing their shopping habits, the question was no longer whether Reliance should participate, but how it should do so,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder at retail consultancy Third Eyesight.

For Reliance, sitting out that growth was becoming harder to justify. “Reliance tends to watch from the sidelines first. They see what is working, what consumers are adopting and where the market is going. But they have also been quite clear that they don’t want to miss the bus,” said the former Reliance Retail employee quoted earlier.

By 2024, Reliance Retail had begun leaning into its retail network. The same shelves stocked for walk-in shoppers could now also be used to fulfil orders placed on JioMart.

“They realised they already had what everyone else was spending years building [a network of stores]. The question was how to make those stores work for online orders as well,” said the former employee.

Shelf shift

For brands, the distinction between JioMart and established quick-commerce players is beginning to show up in key decisions like products to list, which pack sizes to push, and where to keep inventory.

Gopal Snacks Ltd, the mass-market savoury brand based in Rajkot, Gujarat, sees Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart as one group, while JioMart sits closer to supermarket chain D-Mart’s digital platform, D-Mart Ready, and BigBasket—where brands can push larger packs and products meant for higher-volume consumption, according to Diganth P., chief commercial advisor at the company.

“On Blinkit and Zepto, we would typically push smaller, 150g packs because they work better for impulse purchases. On JioMart, we push the 400g and larger packs because the consumer is more likely to be buying for regular household consumption,” said Diganth.

For dairy products maker Milky Mist Ltd, the JioMart attraction is less about creating another quick-commerce channel than extending its relationship with Reliance Retail. The firm already supplies 100–120 unique products to about 300 Reliance stores, including Smart Bazaar and Fresh. JioMart adds another way for consumers to access those products.

“We are looking at JioMart differently. It gives us an opportunity to take more of our assortment through the Reliance network and expand our reach,” said K. Rathnam, chief executive officer (CEO) of Milky Mist. “Sales on JioMart are seeing 30–35% growth every month, so naturally we want to build on that. Reliance already has the infrastructure in place, which makes it easier for us to scale with them.”

Smartwatch and headphones brand GoBoult has in recent months substantially expanded its range of products on JioMart, allocating dedicated inventory for fulfilment through Reliance Digital in key cities.

“JioMart’s broader assortment and connection with Reliance Digital give electronics a more considered retail environment, while still retaining the convenience of hyperlocal fulfillment,” said Varun Gupta, co-founder of GoBoult. “For us, that makes it better suited to showcasing the depth of our portfolio, from TWS (true wireless stereo) and headphones to speakers and wearables. I believe it has the potential to become a distinct retail channel for electronics, although I would say we are still in the early stages of that evolution.”

Similarly, Pluckk, which sells premium fresh produce and packaged food like coconut water and dips, sees JioMart as part of a broader omnichannel strategy in which Reliance’s retail footprint complements the speed-led role played by the likes of Blinkit and Zepto.

“For us, it is not about choosing one platform over another. Different platforms serve different consumer occasions, and JioMart gives us another way to reach consumers who are shopping for their regular household needs perhaps less frequently in a week,” said Pratik Gupta, co-founder and CEO, Pluckk.

For categories such as incense sticks and other products related to prayers that are usually part of routine monthly purchases, JioMart’s ecosystem offers wider options for buyers. “For a widely consumed category like incense, the combination of physical retail presence and digital discoverability can be particularly relevant,” said Arjun Ranga, managing director of Cycle Pure Agarbathi.

This platform-specific approach isn’t without its sceptics. While brands are tailoring their quick-commerce approach based on each platform’s strengths, the distinction may not last forever, said Madhav Kasturia, founder and CEO of Zippee, which provides 60-minute and same-day delivery for digital brands and marketplaces. “Over time, I think these shopping missions will overlap more.”

Third Eyesight’s Dutta adds another caveat. “It’s too early to say that the platforms are specialising around specific consumer missions. I think there’s more of a customer-segment-driven approach. But given the demand, density overlaps between the quick-commerce players will most certainly remain for some time.”

Three-year test

In its latest investor presentation, Reliance Industries set a three-year goal for Reliance Retail to double operating Ebitda over FY27–29, with JioMart positioned as the "principal growth platform for the next four quarters”. Its plan is to first scale up JioMart’s operations and then improve repeat rates, basket sizes, inventory turns, and fulfillment or online delivery economics—all key digital commerce metrics. (Operating Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and non-operating income, is a key measure of a company’s efficiency in its core operations.)

“Our value creation journey is sequenced. Build an online scale first, then monetize that scale for sustainable value creation,” Reliance Retail’s CFO Taluja said in the June-quarter investor presentation.

Reliance also plans to expand its dark stores while measuring order density (number of orders within a specific geographic zone), fulfillment costs and contribution margins (total revenue minus variable costs) market by market. “This year, online growth will be a focus but it will be quite measured. Growth will be funded from existing profits and the absolute numbers will grow,” Taluja said in the quarterly presentation.

“They are not saying stores versus dark stores. It is more about using whatever infrastructure makes sense in a particular market. If a store can handle the demand, use it. If you need a dedicated dark store, build one,” said the former Reliance Retail employee. “Reliance’s bet is increasingly about making each micro-market work before adding more capacity.”

This is where the next phase of growth could get harder for JioMart. While its average daily orders more than doubled in the June quarter and its active seller base grew 26%, that growth came at a cost. Reliance Retail’s Ebitda margin fell to 7.9% in the June quarter from 8.7% a year earlier as investments in digital commerce increased.

That makes density the crucial word for Reliance’s digital ambitions. Its latest investor presentation says JioMart’s next phase of growth will depend on getting more orders through each fulfillment node and route, improving inventory turns, and lowering the cost to serve customers.

“If you have an existing store and you can add another stream of business to it, that can be attractive. But you need enough orders in a micro-market to make the economics work,” Third Eyesight’s Dutta said.

Reliance Retail wants to focus on improving the quality of orders, which includes getting customers to return to the platform more often and order more each time, eventually generating enough value to offset the cost of serving them. “Basket values grow over a period of time, so that will help improve the overall business and margins,” CFO Taluja had said.

The company also plans to increase the share of its own brands and other forms of monetisation. “We will scale where service quality and market-level economics can be demonstrated,” Reliance Retail said in its June-quarter investor presentation.

For Reliance, the next three years will show whether its vast network of stores can do more than fulfil online orders. These stores will have to become the engine that makes JioMart work.