The digital and new commerce businesses accounted for 19 per cent of Reliance Retail’s total revenue in the second quarter (Q2) of the fiscal year 2023-24 (FY24), Reliance Industries (RIL) said in its quarterly results.
In the preceding June quarter, these businesses accounted for 18 per cent of the revenue of the retail arm of RIL.
Overall, Reliance Retail’s revenue from operations rose 19.5 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 68,937 crore in Q2 FY24, while net profit grew 21 per cent to Rs 2,790 crore.
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 br of electronics-selling merchants by 44 per cent year-on-year (YoY).
Meanwhile, the ecommerce platform AJIO saw its catalog expand 50 per cent YoY during the quarter, even as the premium Ajio Luxe expanded its portfolio by 61 per cent. 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 and 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 a ‘robust increase in traffic and average bill value.’ RIL said JioMart also scaled up its catalog by 3X and seller br by 2X in the last year.
The media arm of the conglomerate continued to see heavy traction, led partly by the 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 the acquisition of rights reached nearly nine crore users on JioCinema.
The conglomerate also said that JioCinema’s ad revenue continued to grow on the back of original digital content.
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 per cent YoY to Rs 19,878 crore during the quarter ended September 2023. On similar lines, the digital arm Jio Platform saw its net profit rise 12 per cent YoY to Rs 5,297 crore in Q2 FY24.
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