Addressing shareholders in the company’s 46th annual general meeting held virtually, Ambani said as “India grows from a $2,500 per-capita economy to a $10,000 per-capita economy, Reliance Retail will be our fastest-growing business in revenues and Ebitda.” Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, or the operating profit.
Based on the latest investment by sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority in Reliance Retail, the valuation of the business has touched ₹8.28 lakh crore. This is in contrast to the last round of fundraising in September 2020 when the valuation was ₹4.28 lakh crore, he said.
“In less than three years, the valuation of retail (business) has almost doubled, notwithstanding the intervening Covid-19 pandemic. Based on this valuation, Reliance Retail, had it been listed, would have ranked among the top four companies in India and top ten retailers globally. The pace of this value creation is unmatched globally,” said Ambani.
Reliance Retail director Isha Ambani told shareholders that the company has invested over $10 billion in the past two years “focusing on building integration, growing in-house brands and improving supply chain networks”.She said the company opened more than 3,300 new stores last fiscal year, taking the total count to over 18,000 stores and that two-thirds of them were in tier-II, -III cities and smaller towns. The digital and new commerce sales contributed nearly ₹50,000 crore last fiscal, accounting for about a fifth of the retail revenue, she said. The business also crossed the milestone of 100 crore transactions and received more than 78 crore footfalls in FY23.”We are delivering value to over 30% of India’s addressable population. All this has made Reliance Retail rank among the top ten most visited retailers in the world,” she said, adding that Reliance Retail currently serves over 98% of India’s pin codes through integrated online and offline channels.
Formats like Trends, Hamleys and Urban Ladder are now live on the cross-category horizontal platform, JioMart, which is seeing a sustained uptick in non-grocery category contribution, she said.
“The launch of JioMart on WhatsApp has been a phenomenal success. There has been 9X growth of JioMart customers on WhatsApp since its launch in 2022,” she said.
Reliance Retail posted annual revenue of ₹2,60,364 crore in FY23, registering year-on-year growth of 30%. It reported a net profit of ₹9,181 crore and Ebitda of ₹17,928 crore for the year.
