The Rulers of the Retail World – Amazon and Reliance – make bold moves to shape the global phygital shopping experience

Two big and different moves by two of the world’s most promising retail giants have left the world overweening on the outcome of those decisions. Retail giant with a strong online presence, Amazon, last week, made a bold move by opening its first Amazon Fresh supermarket in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills. This is the e-commerce giant's first of seven Amazon Fresh stores that it plans to set up in California and Illinois in the coming weeks and months. This move apparently underscores Amazon’s belief that physical stores will remain a key component of how consumers shop in the digital era.

A whole new experience in shopping

Although Amazon already has Whole Foods and smaller Amazon Go stores, the idea behind Fresh will be to build a new grocery store experience from the ground up targeting new and different customers who enjoy shopping in the offline world. Analysts in the US believe that Amazon Fresh will directly set a competition to the likes of Walmart, which dominates the world of physical shopping in the US. Data analysts say that Walmart owns a lion’s share of physical store presence in the USA whereas Amazon holds just a quarter of that share.

The Fresh store by Amazon is going to transform the shopping experiences is what the analysts say. At this Amazon's newest grocery store, consumers can ask Alexa voice assistants where to find their products of choice, scan, check out groceries using a shopping cart, and pick up books ordered off even from Amazon’s website.  The stores are also going to debut the Amazon Dash Cart, a shopping cart that scans groceries and double up as a checkout stand.

Of course, there is going to be a lot more tech engagement-based shopping interventions by Amazon that will soon be rolled out in the course of the time in all its 7 stores and will also ensure that the fragmented retail market is soon defragmented.

The emergence of a retailer giant in India

So with the two big moves, mentioned at the start of this piece, one was made by Amazon in the US with its significant phygital initiative and the other is our country’s very own business conglomerate Reliance’s move.

Considered as India’s most unforgettable business buyout, Reliance Industries Ltd., last weekend, announced that it acquired the retail, wholesale, logistics, and warehousing units of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group for $3.4 billion. This transaction now propels Mukesh Ambani’s ambitions to dominate India’s retail sector.

The acquisition is being done as part of the Scheme in which Future Group is merging certain companies carrying on the businesses into Future Enterprises Limited (FEL).

With this latest acquisition, Reliance Retail will now have access to around 1,800 stores across Future Group's Big Bazaar, FBB, Easyday, Central, Foodhall formats, which are spread in over 420 cities in India.

Expressing her comment on this acquisition, Isha Ambani, Director, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, said that with this transaction Reliance will provide a home to the renowned formats and brands of Future Group as well as preserve its business ecosystem, which has played an important role in the evolution of modern retail in India. “We hope to continue the growth momentum of the retail industry with our unique model of active collaboration with small merchants and kiranas as well as large consumer brands. We are committed to continue providing value to our consumers across the country,” said Isha Ambani.

And the market analysts predict that with Big Bazaar and other mass-appeal fashion and food retail brands of the Future Group under its management, Reliance Retail is now ready to take on other organized retail biggies such as Amazon and Walmart-Flipkart, who have made significant investments in India leading to sizeable presence.

Analysts also expect this buyout to expedite the growth of Jio through the JioMart online grocery delivery service and Facebook-owned Whatsapp-based retail transactions. And these two tech giants will also work on exclusive digital solutions that integrate the online and offline experience for Reliance Fresh stores.

So truly these moves by both the strong companies reflect that the lines between online and physical retail have begun blurring. Perhaps, soon we can expect Amazon to replicate its Fresh stores in India with Reliance Retail running a parallel competitive arm ushering phygital experience for the tech gluttonous and brand-conscious Indian consumers.