The digital and new commerce businesses accounted for 19% of Reliance Retail’s total revenue in the second quarter (Q2) of the fiscal year 2023-24 (FY24), Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) said in its quarterly results.
In the preceding June quarter, these businesses accounted for 18% of the revenue of the retail arm of RIL.
Overall, Reliance Retail’s revenue from operations rose 19.5% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 68,937 Cr in Q2 FY24, while net profit grew 21% to INR 2,790 Cr.
Reliance Retail counts brands such as JioMart, AJIO, Netmeds, and Trends under its belt. It sells products ranging from footwear to electronics at both online and offline stores.
The digital and new commerce businesses continued to scale up across categories, reporting healthy operational metrics. Led by sales of phones and high-end televisions, the new commerce vertical saw ‘robust growth’ across the electronics category. The retail arm scaled up its base of electronics-selling merchants by 44% year-on-year (YoY).
Meanwhile, ecommerce platform AJIO saw its catalogue expand 50% YoY during the quarter even as premium Ajio Luxe expanded its portfolio by 61%. Reliance Retail said its online furniture arm Urban Ladder also forayed into the B2B business through institutional sales during the period under review.
A year after acquiring Metro Cash & Carry in November 2022, Reliance Retail is still in the process of integrating the wholesaler’s operations with its new commerce grocery vertical.
JioMart, the crown jewel of RIL’s digital and new commerce business, claimed it continues to be on a sustained path of growth with ‘robust increase in traffic and average bill value’. RIL said JioMart also scaled up its catalogue by 3X and seller base by 2X in the last year.
“I am delighted to report that we have delivered yet another quarter of stellar performance and achieved an all-time high across financial metrics. The performance is a testament to our customer-centric approach that defines Reliance Retail and we look forward to serving our customers this festive season with renewed optimism and enthusiasm,” Isha Ambani, executive director of Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, said.
JioCinema Leads The Way
The media arm of the conglomerate continued to see heavy traction, led partly by streaming service JioCinema. Sports continued to drive JioCinema’s growth as the company’s investments in sports programming, especially cricket, led to a ‘sharp jump’ in audience traffic on the streaming platform, it said.
In its quarterly results, RIL also noted that the media business’ EBITDA declined on account of heavy investments in sports and digital verticals. It also said that investments are necessary in the two spaces in the near term to ensure the media arm is able to build a strong consumer proposition.
Close on the heels of JioCinema poaching the media rights of domestic and international matches of the Indian cricket team, RIL said the India-Australia broadcast after acquisition of rights reached nearly 9 Cr users on JioCinema.
While noting that live sports consumption is increasingly pivoting towards digital, RIL said its media arm also plans to leverage the wide reach of Viacom18’s content library to drive user traffic looking for ‘quality content.’
The conglomerate also said that JioCinema’s ad revenue continued to grow on the back of original digital content.
“JioCinema continued its journey of entertaining audiences with premium content like Bigg Boss OTT, Taali, Kaalkoot, and Khatron Ke Khiladi amongst others. Bigg Boss OTT became the most streamed entertainment property in India, watched by over 100 Mn viewers, generating 30 billion minutes of watch-time,” the company said.
This comes at a time when Reliance is reportedly also in talks with Disney to acquire the latter’s India operations, including Disney+ Hotstar, to complement JioCinema’s offerings.
Overall, RIL’s consolidated profit after tax (PAT) zoomed 29.7% YoY to INR 19,878 Cr during the quarter ended September 2023. On similar lines, digital arm Jio Platform saw its net profit rise 12% YoY to INR 5,297 Cr in Q2 FY24.
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