Reliance Retail completes Rs 47,265 cr fund raise for 10% stake sale

Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd said on Thursday that it had completed its divestment programme, raising Rs 47,265 crore from investors by selling a 10.09 per cent stake.

“This is the largest fund raise exercise in the sector completed within two months,” Reliance Industries (RIL), the parent of Reliance Retail said. “All the investments have been completed, with receipt of funds and issue of shares," the company added.

Since September, Reliance Retail has raised money from Silver Lake, KKR, Mubadala, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), GIC, TPG, General Atlantic and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) in a divestment programme that mirrored sister Jio Platforms a few months earlier.

However, RIL had indicated that it would not offload significant stake in Reliance Retail, choosing to stick with financial investors for now. Experts say a strategic investor may be inducted later as Reliance Retail prepares to fight Amazon, Walmart-Flipkart and DMart among others for a larger slice of the retail market.

While Reliance is the largest organised retailer in the market, its deal with Future has been kept on hold due to a dispute with Amazon, Future group's former partner. Amazon is seeking to block the deal, saying it violates a 2019 agreement with a Future group promoter entity. The matter is being fought in court.

Reliance Retail, however, has already launched its new commerce venture JioMart, seeking to make it a one-stop shop for grocery and other segments. The company is also onboarding kiranas and is using JioMart for its omnichannel play across lifestyle, apparels and electronics.

The company is also scouting for more acquisitions to beef up its technology and go-to-market capabilities in retail.

In its investor update this month, RIL said that it would add the pharmacy channel to JioMart, apart from categories such as fashion, lifestyle and electronics to the JioMart cart.

The company has also integrated acquisitions from 2019 into Reliance Retail including Grab (last-mile logistics), C-Square (analytics and resource planning), NowFloats (software solutions for SMEs) and Fynd (fashion e-commerce).