Ambani seems all geared up to set up an e-commerce business and change the dynamics of how Indians buy their stuff. This will pitch him directly against the e-commerce giant, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon the newly acquired Walmart’s Flipkart and the Chinese Big Moth Alibaba.
With the telecom and data network industry already in his pocket, Ambani has lots of advantages if he gets into this domain.
With launching Jio, within 2 years Ambani has gathered over 215 million subscribers, which has made him clear that consumer-led business is the biggest today. He is already on the verge of rolling out broadband fibrenet and taking digital and immersive shopping experience to another level by enabling Indians to feel all this on their mobile screens and TVs. He wants to make extensive use of technologies like augmented reality, holography, and VR. Reliance has already initiated Jio branded payments and cloud services and is also big into movies and music. Ambani envisions connecting everything everywhere to everyone.
India which is all set to overtake China’s population by 2024 still has a barely 3% use if the 860 billion retail market, and hence in spite of the biggies like Amazon, Flipkart, and Alibaba, the opportunity is huge.
And an Indian e-commerce funded by an Indian company will prove to be a huge plus point, as Indians have always been receptive to foreign collaborations.
Another great advantage is that with a mobile operator, Jio and the fast-growing Reliance Retail Network, which sells everything from digital goods to groceries and fashion, the company already has a great insight on consumer habits and this could definitely give them an edge.
Now let’s wait for the big announcement and also one of the biggest e-commerce marketing wars ever.
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