Reliance Retail accelerates quick-commerce push, darkish retailer community reaches 600

Reliance Retail is doubling down on India’s fast-growing quick-commerce market, because it accelerates investments in darkish shops, logistics, and buyer acquisition to problem established rivals similar to Zomato-owned Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart.

The corporate’s quick-commerce arm, JioMart, now delivers to over 5,000 pin codes throughout 1,000 cities, and is registering 42% quarter-on-quarter progress in common each day orders, 200% increased than a 12 months earlier, in keeping with Chief Monetary Officer Dinesh Taluja.

Reliance Retail reported 18% year-on-year progress for the quarter ended September 2025. The corporate opened 600 new darkish shops throughout the interval, increasing its whole community to greater than 3,500 grocery shops nationwide.

“We’re shortly scaling up our fast commerce providing fairly aggressively,” Taluja instructed analysts on the firm’s quarterly earnings name. “As soon as assured of our mannequin, we started speaking our proposition, velocity, transparency, finest pricing, and widest assortment, and it’s resonating nicely with clients.”

Pivot to hurry

JioMart’s quick-commerce enlargement marks a big shift from its earlier grocery supply mannequin, which relied on next-day fulfilment. As shopper expectations modified and rivals established 10- to 30-minute supply benchmarks, Reliance re-engineered its logistics community to fulfill the brand new customary.

“Customers have advanced, and on the spot supply has change into the norm,” Taluja mentioned. “We pivoted from scheduled deliveries to sub-30-minute fulfilment to match competitors.”

Reliance mentioned it’s utilizing its huge offline community to broaden fast commerce throughout electronics, style, and equipment. In electronics, Reliance has enabled 30-minute supply of grab-and-go assortments from its shops within the prime ten cities. The corporate’s on-line style arm, Ajio Rush, provides merchandise with 30-minute supply in 300 pin codes throughout six cities.

The Ajio Rush mannequin, Taluja mentioned, has seen “robust uptake and excessive conversions,” with decrease returns and better common promoting costs than conventional e-commerce orders.

Catching up on scale

Fast commerce has change into one of many fastest-growing channels for Reliance Retail, now contributing about 20% of whole retail income, up from 18% a 12 months in the past. Reliance added 6 million new transacting clients within the quarter, a 120% enhance over the earlier quarter.

JioMart’s enlargement comes amid a fierce race for dominance in India’s $45 billion e-grocery and comfort market. Blinkit, now a core a part of Zomato’s technique, has been including shops aggressively and is nearing profitability, whereas Swiggy Instamart continues to scale with smaller order sizes and localised assortments.

Reliance has been concerned in fast commerce because the phase took off in 2021. It invested and was the biggest shareholder of fast commerce startup Dunzo.

Reliance, nonetheless, is positioning itself because the broadest quick-commerce participant, spanning extra classes and geographies than its friends. With an current offline footprint and deep provide chain integration, the corporate is betting that scale and assortment will offset its late begin.

Taluja mentioned the corporate’s technique stays targeted on omnichannel integration, utilizing its bodily shops to energy on-line fulfilment and vice versa. “We’re neither an offline nor an internet participant,” he mentioned. “What issues is whether or not we seize sufficient buyer spend, no matter the place the acquisition occurs.”