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Reliance Retail is not ready for launch

If industry sources are to be believed, Mukesh Ambani's retail arm is still grappling with personnel and realty issues.

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C Chitti Pantulu & Sindhu Bhattacharya

HYDERABAD/NEW DELHI: Mukesh Ambani is known to do things with a Big Bang. Make that A BIG, BIG BANG.

But next week’s Diwali will be a quiet affair for his group’s retail arm, Reliance Retail. If industry sources are to be believed, kickoff is still some time away as the company grapples with retail talent issues - specifically, training them — and some high real estate prices in Hyderabad. Realtors jacked up prices when they came to know Reliance was on the lookout. And training fresh personnel is taking more time than what the company expected, sources said.

Also, all systems are not in place yet, be it information technology or supply chain.

“We are in no hurry to launch, but whenever we are ready, we’ll doing it with a big bang. There’s no sanctity to any launch date or why we are starting off with Hyderabad,” said a Reliance source. “The so-called October 18 launch date,” he said, “is a rumour floated by some media groups.”

Another source said it could very well be December before the official launch. That makes sense, since group founder and doyen Dhirubhai Ambani’s birthday falls on December 28.

Also, Reliance Retail with kick off with the smallest of its format, called Field Fresh, which is around 2000 square feet big. The bigger formats - it plans a total three, including hypermarkets — will come much later.

Reliance Retail has identified three to four properties — all in the range of 2000 to 4000 square feet — in and around Hyderabad.

The company will kick off with whichever is ready first. After Hyderabad, it will be Ahmedabad and then Mumbai and New Delhi simultaneously. The Mumbai, Delhi launches will happen 45 days after the Hyderabad.

If construction activity is anything is to go by, the first one is likely to be the property at Uppal, about 7 km from Secunderabad railway station.

Apart from its outlets in Hyderabad, Reliance Retail has identified 15 cities in Andhra Pradesh including Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Chittoor, Tirupathi, Adilabad and  Karimnagar for entry. All are B-class cities but with big potential to grow fast.

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