Reliance Retail leaps to 94th spot on Deloitte's top retailers' list

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Retail has jumped 95 places on Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2019 index, to reach the 94th spot as revenues soared on the back of growth in grocery, consumer electronics, and fashion and lifestyle businesses.

While Deloitte ranked 250 firms globally for its annual report based on their retail revenues for financial year 2017, it factored revenue for the year ended March 2018 in case of Indian companies.

Reliance Retail "was a new entrant in the Fastest 50 list FY2016 (released last year) and continued its rapid growth by nearly doubling its retail revenue (in local currency) in FY 2017. This was also reflected in its climb of 95 places to number 94 in the top 250," Deloitte said.

Reliance Retail is a part of oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries.

The company's "retail segment witnessed robust operating performance, driven by major growth across its grocery, consumer electronics, and fashion and lifestyle businesses," it said.

This was supported by a combination of store expansion and same-store sales growth across its store concepts.

Reliance Retail, which operates 9,907 stores in over 6,400 towns and cities, is India's largest retail chain, both by revenue and the total number of stores. In the first nine months of the current fiscal, the company reported more than doubling of revenue to Rs 93,903 crore and a profit of Rs 4,278 crore.

Deloitte said top 250 retailers aggregated revenue of USD 4.53 trillion and reported 5.7 per cent composite year-over-year retail revenue growth. Five-year retail revenue growth was 3.3 per cent.

"The world's top 10 retailers contributed 31.6 per cent share to the top 250's total retail revenue in financial year 2017, an increase of 0.9 percentage point year-on-year. The top three retailers maintained their positions, while Amazon jumped up two positions to number 4 with the highest retail revenue growth of 25.3 per cent," it said.

Walmart retained its position as the world's largest retailer, with an improvement in its retail revenue growth of 3 per cent in financial year 2017. "Walmart's recent initiatives include the acquisition of Indian retailer, Flipkart, and its partnership with Japanese retailer Rakuten."