Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is acquiring 87.6% stakes in Fynd, a Mumbai-based e-commerce startup. As a part of this acquisition, RIL will be investing Rs. 295 crores ($42.3 million) through Reliance Industrial Investments & Holdings in Shopsense Retail Technologies (which runs Fynd).
“Reliance is taking the majority stake in Fynd, but at the end of the day, for us it is like any other investor coming in. We will still continue to work separately, we have our own independent roadmap, and we have own clients and products that we plan to grow. So things continue as it is,” Fynd’s Co-founder Harsh Shah told TechCrunch.
Fynd is an online shopping platform, launched in 2012 by Farooq Adam, Harsh Shah, and Sreeraman M.G. The company’s lead investors include Google among others like Kae Capital, Venture Catalysts, Tracxn Labs, and Axis Capital Partners. Fynd’s an offline-to-online (O2O) commerce which helps retailers sell their products through their online platform. Also, it enables them to sell their products on other e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.
“Even though we have a business-to-consumer product, we have five business-to-business and B2B2C products, which are doing extremely well,” told Harsh Shah in a statement to the Economic Times.
Reliance, one of India’s most profitable conglomerate, has its own retail business – Reliance Retail. This includes brands like Reliance Fresh, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Time Out, Reliance Digital, Reliance Wellness, Reliance Trends, and Reliance Mart among many others.
The Indian government started the “Make in India” program, the encourage companies to manufacture their products in India and also promote Indian businesses in 2014. Since then, Indian industries which include RIL, have been hugely benefitted from the program.
RIL’s telecommunications subsidiary, Reliance Jio, is the country’s largest telecom operator which has a huge customer base. Now, with the acquisition of Fynd, Reliance will try to enter the growing Indian e-commerce market with the help of Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio.
