Reliance's first Hypermart to go on stream from I-Day

Ahmedabad, Aug 14 (UNI) Reliance Retail Ltd (RRL), a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), will launch its first Hypermarket named 'RelianceMart' here tomorrow coinciding with the 60th Independence Day of the country.

The three-storey 'Reliance Hypermart' is spread over 1,65,000 sq ft and will have on its shelves more than 95,000 products with aggregate stocks of about half-a-million pieces.

It will sell a large number of consumer durable, including clothing, stationery, toys, medicines, home furnishings, footwear, FMCG, IT, automotive accessories, apparel accessories, fine jewelry and fashion jewelry as part of its lifestyle section, said Reliance Retail Chief Executive and President Raghu Pillai.

RelianceMart offers some unique services to the shoppers like tailoring, shoe repair, watch repair, a photo shop, gifting services and laundry services all within the store under one roof. The Mart also houses its own fresh bakery serving ''hot off the oven'' bread and bread products throughout the day.

This Hypermart is being opened in less than a year of Reliance's entry into the 300-billion-dollar booming organised retail business.

Last November, it had set up a cluster of Reliance Fresh stores in Hyderabad.

RRL has so far opened more than 250 fresh vegetable, fruits and grocery shops in 10 states as part of its 'farm to fork' retail initiative with a planned investment of Rs 25,000 crore across India over a period of five years.

Commenting on the launch of this new format, company Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani stated, ''Organised retail has the potential to trigger socio-economic transformation on an unprecedented scale in our country and will bring about enormous spin-off benefits to the Indian economy and its various constituents.'' The launch of RelianceMart is yet another step by Reliance Retail towards providing an international shopping experience to all our customers at unmatched affordability, guaranteed quality and choice of products and services, he added.

The next two hypermarkets are to be opened in Jamnagar in Gujarat and in the NCR by next month with plans to open 30 such marts by the year. RRL further wants to expand to 500 such RelianceMart by 2010 across the country.

Vimal, the fabric brand owned by RIL, of which Reliance Retail is a subsidiary, will also relaunch its products have a store within the Ahmedabad Hypermart and will offer custom-tailoring services, said the company Group President Corporate Affairs Parimal Nathwani.

RIL, India's largest private sector and global Fortune 500 company, will have a pan-India presence with such Reliance Fresh, Reliance Digital and Reliance Hypermarts.

Reliance had opened its first Digital store in Ghaziabad near Delhi in July.

In parallel, Reliance Retail is building a robust and state-of-the-art supply chain infrastructure spanning the entire country, besides setting up its own cold storage chain. It is expected to generate direct employment for half-a-million people and indirect employment to two million, Mr Pillai added.

RelianceMart will continue to offer all its customers RelianceOne, a common membership and loyalty programme across all its formats, which follows the philosophy of 'Earn Anywhere, Spend Anywhere'. RelianceMart will also provide easy and attractive finance options, including zero per cent financing for the purchases on select products.

UNI