Reliance best placed to be top Indian e-com player: Bernstein Research

India is evolving into a market with three players: Amazon, Walmart and Reliance, it noted.

"Given distribution challenges and India's propensity to 'skip a generation' in most technologies, we believe the Indian e-commerce market will be different. An integrated model (offline plus online plus prime), strong distribution capability and superior cost advantage (against online players) are required from the start," it said.

Reliance Industries’ telecom arm Jio has 430 million mobile subscribers, its retail arm has 18,300 retail stores in India and its digital mix is scaling up by 17-18 per cent, a news agency reported.

"It's a disruptive playbook -- integrate offline + online + prime makes it the strongest competitor to Amazon/Walmart," Bernstein said.

Reliance now ranks third in India, with $5.7 billion worth e-commerce sales.

"We believe Reliance Retail/Jio is the best-positioned player in the largest and fastest-growing e-commerce market. The advantages of its retail network, mobile network, digital ecosystem and 'home field advantage' in a famously complex regulatory and operating environment mean in the long term, it will likely claim the lion's share of the $150 billion-plus e-commerce marketplace," it added.

The large number of affluent households makes India a very attractive market, it noted.

India also has one of the lowest 4G data prices in the world and the highest per capita mobile data consumption in the world, it added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)