News: Reliance Retail opens six more outlets

(PTI 01/12/2006) Hyderabad - With its retail experiment getting an overwhelming support from consumers, Reliance Retail Ltd has added six more outlets to its pilot project to test acceptance across classes. "Six more Reliance Fresh stores have been opened in the city in addition to the 11 inaugurated on November 3," company sources said on Monday. These air-conditioned stores, which sell a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, eggs, dairy products and Reliance's private label of groceries, have received tremendous response with a turnover of Rs 2,00,000 per day. The new outlets have been opened in areas ranging from upmarket to middle-class localities. The pilot project would roll out this month into four more cities -- Delhi, Chennai, Cochin and Jaipur, with 100 stores in the pipeline, sources said. Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of India's largest private firm Reliance Industries, would graduate to the second level of its retail initiative in February-end. The company would unveil the big format stores -- hypermarkets in 20 locations each spread across over 60,000 square feet compared to the 3,000-5,000 square feet of the Reliance Fresh outlets. The company, which has stolen a march over rivals such as the Bharti-Wal-Mart retail venture, has outlined an investment of more than Rs 25,000 crore in its retail venture over the next five years. Reliance expects to take its retail formats to 784 cities and towns, besides over 6,000 rural towns by 2010, with over 100 million square feet of retail space.