Driven by growing demand in the most populous market that is not showing any signs of a slowdown, India’s retail giant Reliance Retail expects to become the world’s biggest apparel seller by volume in the next two years. It sold 430 million pieces of garments in 2022, enough to clothe the entire population of the US and Canada.
With brands like Trends, Centro, Azorte and Fashion Factory, having 4,000+ fashion and apparel stores, Reliance is by far the market leader in the segment.
Reliance Retail has grown at 17 per cent on a compounded annual rate over the last ten years with consumer electronics expanding the fastest. While in the past five years, fashion and lifestyle have been the growth drivers as this category expanded 43 per cent, followed by grocery which grew 41 per cent.
Fashion contributes the highest to overall profitability with the widest margins at 24 per cent.
Akhilesh Prasad, Chief Executive, Reliance’s Fashion and Lifestyle was quoted by The Economic Times saying, “We sell the largest number of garments in the country and in a year or two, we should be the highest in the world. We have 1.4 billion people (in India), so the market is already here.”
He also said that customer spending is purely based on sentiment and India’s growth story is intact because of a feel-good factor in the market. India will be the fastest growing economy and there is no problem. So, we are managing customer sentiment which ensures the market grows.
He further added that Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani believes that the one who doesn’t grow actually shrinks. And that’s the brief from our leadership.
Overall, in India’s Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, fashion is the fastest-growing category as there was a growth of over 93 per cent in fiscal 2022. In fact, online shopping novices typically start with purchases from the fashion segment.
