Amid festive season, Reliance JioMart adds electronics after fashion to battle Amazon, Flipkart, others

Nearly three weeks after adding the fashion category to its e-commerce venture JioMart, Reliance has now expanded the portal into the electronics vertical to further take on Amazon, Flipkart, and other marketplaces. The expansion came a little over three months after Mukesh Ambani had announced plans, at the Reliance Industries’ 43rd annual general meeting, for JioMart to venture into electronics apart from fashion, smartphones, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare. The service, however, as a beta launch, is not available across the country. Similar to previous categories, Reliance has picked select areas in Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Kalyan to test the service. “India’s largest electronics store now on JioMart,” the website read. The foray into fashion and electronics segments also assumed significance amid the ongoing festive season wherein marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and others have already kicked off their series of festive sales.

Gaming consoles and accessories; home appliances such as geysers, irons, air purifiers; kitchen appliances including juicers, food processors, cameras; TV and audio accessories; sports and fitness, shavers, hairdryers in personal care; smart lights and cameras under smart devices; power banks and chargers apart from other electronic accessories such as pen drives, memory cards, headsets, etc., are currently available. JioMart is offering discounts from as low as 3 percent to over 60 per cent across various categories.

Also read: Amazon, Flipkart, others sold $3.1 billion worth goods in this many days of festive season’s first sale

The orders for the electronics segment will be fulfilled by Reliance Retail’s consumer electronics brand Reliance Digital similar to Reliance Trends for fashion orders. Reliance Retail, according to its website, operates the “largest consumer electronics store chain in India” having more than 8,000 Reliance Digital and Jio stores along with offering more than 200 national and international brands. JioMart has added products from Bajaj, Philips, SanDisk, Sony, Apple, Seagate, Samsung, Amazfit, JBL, and Boat under the electronics category.

The company’s entry into healthcare and pharma also seems round the corner after the acquisition of digital pharmacy startup Netmeds in August through Reliance Retail Ventures. It had picked a stake in Vitalic Health and its subsidiaries, collectively known as Netmeds, for around Rs 620 crores in cash, the company had said, giving around 60 per cent stake Netmeds and 100 per cent direct equity ownership of its subsidiaries such as Tresara Health Private Limited, Netmeds Market Place Limited, and Dadha Pharma Distribution Pvt Limited.

JioMart had signed an agreement earlier this month with publicly listed e-commerce venture Infibeam to use its solutions for e-commerce and digital payments services According to a RedSeer analysis on Wednesday, e-commerce marketplaces have already generated 77 per cent of the forecasted sales during the first 4.5 days of the first event of festive sales. Out of the expected gross sales of $4 billion, marketplaces have already enabled the sale worth $3.1 billion between October 15 and October 19.