Future Retail Ltd (FRL) on Monday said the Delhi high court has ruled that statutory authorities cannot be restrained from acting in accordance with law and stayed a previous order on status quo of its Rs 24,713 crore deal with Reliance. Updating stock exchanges about the court ruling, FRL said a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh has stayed the operation and effect of order passed by single Judge J R Midha on February 2. "...inter alia, for the prima facie reason that the company is not a party to the Shareholders Agreement dated August 22, 2019 executed between Amazon, Future Coupons Private Limited and the Promoters of FRL, under which arbitration was initiated by Amazon in Singapore," FRL said.
Whether it's Carrefour, Ford, or other foreign majors, they are ready to adjust their strategies and design their plans in a way that would address the Indian consumption story.
Meesho has emerged as the second-largest player by order share in this year's festive sales till now, surpassing Amazon, while Flipkart Group platforms topped the market in both orders and gross merchandise value (GMV), according to according to a report by consultancy firm Redseer. It said Flipkart Group maintained its leadership position with a 62 per cent market share in terms of GMV during the first week of the festive season, followed by Amazon which had 26 per cent share, while the remaining 12 per cent was distributed among other e-commerce players. In terms of order volume, Flipkart Group again leads the market with about 49 per cent share and SoftBank-backed Meesho ranks second with about 21 per cent order share, according to Redseer.
Last November, a lawyer for Future Retail Limited (FRL) told Delhi high court that Amazon is interfering with its lawful business and thousands may lose their jobs and FRL may go bankrupt. Senior advocate Harish Salve, who appeared for FRL, likened Amazon to East India Company. Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, who represented Amazon, told the Future counsel to keep the "East India Company" rhetoric aside, as Amazon has invested $6.5 billion all over India and created 900,000 jobs. This drama played out in the case in which Amazon has challenged Future's $3.4-billion deal with Reliance, alleging the retailer's deal breached an agreement with the American e-commerce firm.
For the fiscal ended 2021, the group has made a loss of Rs 5,943 crore on sales of Rs 11,723 crore, a drop of 66 per cent over fiscal 2020. The group's total debt was up by 7 per cent to Rs 20,742 crore.
Bajaj Auto was the top laggard in the Sensex pack, tumbling around 6 per cent, followed by M&M, Reliance Industries (RIL), Tata Steel, Tech Mahindra, SBI, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank. NSE Nifty tumbled 162.60 points or 1.36 per cent to 11,767.75.
E-commerce major Amazon has written to Sebi yet again, apprising the market regulator of the formation of the arbitration tribunal at SIAC while urging it to suspend the review of the Rs 24,713 crore Future-RIL deal. It has also filed an appeal with the division bench of the Delhi high court against the December 21 order of the single member bench, according to sources.
Future group founder Kishore Biyani on Wednesday said the homegrown retail major lost nearly Rs 7,000 crore revenue in first three-four months of the Covid-19 pandemic due to closing of stores, which led him to sell his business to Reliance Industries.
With an epic battle of billionaires for supremacy in one of the world's most prolific markets and a pandemic-propelled surge in online shopping in the background, India's nearly trillion-dollar retail market is hoping to touch 85 per cent of the pre-COVID business in the first half of the New Year. In a year when the COVID-19 carnage ripped apart the retail business, circa 2020 will best go down for the unravelling of the war between Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest man, and richest Indian Mukesh Ambani for pre-eminence in the booming market that is estimated to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025. It all started with Ambani's Reliance Industries agreeing in August to buy assets of the nation's second-largest retailer for Rs 24,713 crore, just a year after Bezos' Amazon purchased an indirect stake in the indebted Future Retail.
Future Retail has shut most of its Big Bazaar stores since February 25 (Friday) and its website is also down as it missed lease payments to Reliance Industries (RIL). RIL will open most of the 200 Future Retail stores as Reliance stores in the next week and it is in the process of taking stock, re-branding, and transferring 30,000 Future Retail and Future Lifestyle employees on to the rolls of its manpower and staffing firm Reliance SMSL, according to a source. The first tranche of stores are set to be opened as early as in the next two days.
"We are delighted to welcome Google as a strategic investor in Jio Platforms. We have signed a binding partnership and an investment agreement under which Google will invest Rs 33,737 crores for a 7.7 per cent stake in Jio Platforms," Mukesh Ambani said at the company's annual general meeting.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has started a limited test use of WhatsApp to connect customers to grocery stores, days after Facebook decided to invest USD 5.7 billion in digital assets controlled by the company. JioMart, an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, "has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders" in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Credit Suisse said in a report.
The case may drag for a few years, experts say, as CAIT and DVM have said they will appeal against the interim relief granted to Amazon.
'We are having an outsize impact not only on the lives of the customers and livelihood, but also the economy of India.'
The deal, which will kick in after the holiday season, in January, will give Apple more visibility among online buyers in India. The partnership could help Apple take on Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus, which has become one of the leading player in the premium smartphone market thanks to Amazon.
12,000: Number of people Flipkart plans to hire in FY15.
Online retail in the country is expected to grow to $200 billion by 2026, up from $15 billion in 2016.
The sale of Nature's Basket, Godrej's chain of food stores in west India, is the second exit by a big group in a year in the category
Why should Reliance Digital position itself as an alternative to Chadhaji's store? It simply doesn't make good business sense, says Sudhir Bisht.
Amazon's fresh investment in its India entities come at a time when the Seattle-based firm has faced losses in several of its business entities in India, such as seller services, wholesale, transportation services and digital payments, for the 2018-19 financial year.
Banking sources said the debt recast is actually 'Plan B' to help the nation's largest retailer stay afloat.
Reliance Industries Ltd, the country's largest company by revenues, profits and market value, has topped Indian corporate in the World's Best Employers rankings 2021 published by Forbes. Reliance was placed at 52 in the overall ranking of 750 global corporates likes Phillips, Sanofi, Pfizer and Intel. Other Indian names in the top 100 rankings were ICICI Bank at 65, HDFC Bank at 77 and HCL Technologies at 90, according to the Forbes ranking.
When Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was conceived last December, the idea was to reduce the dominance of e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. It was also to bring in a level-playing field for small merchants in India's fragmented but fast-growing $1-trillion retail market. However, those goals have changed now as large e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Amazon and Ecom Express are in various levels of talks with the ONDC team. They want to form partnerships like integrating with the network as well as providing their expertise to build it, according to the industry sources.
Mukesh Ambani is stringing in new partnerships within the Reliance ecosystem with the best in global business -- from Facebook, Google and Microsoft to umpteen sovereign wealth funds and a soon-to-be-declared strategic partner in a big global retailer, notes Shailesh Dobhal.
While global competitors Amazon and Walmart are looking to explore B2B online in India, traditional Indian retailers like the Future group and Reliance Retail and e-commerce players such as Snapdeal and Flipkart have no immediate plans in this area.
Its trajectory in telecom is well known but now it is pushing for a similar leap into the ranks of the top players in its other businesses: media and entertainment, e-commerce, a series of online businesses ranging from health to education, and retail.
The Indian lenders are worried over the fast depleting asset base of the Future group companies which would make their recovery of dues difficult. The asset base of Future group has eroded in the last two years due to lockdown and takeover of 947 stores by rival Reliance Retail after Future group's lease on the properties expired. Bankers said they have approached bankruptcy court so as to avoid any duplication of legal action and reduce time at the legal forums.
While brick-and-mortar retailers have been the most vocal in their protests, e-tailers do not seem to be in a hurry.
Everyday consumerables, such as grocery and order-in food items are the key buyout sector, analysts say, and a major reason for kirana stores' digitisation push.
Retailer bodies to demand govt action against I-Day sales offers, threaten legal action for breach of FDI rules.
Besides Jeff Bezos-led Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart is also facing a threat from Asia's richest man and RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, who is also betting big to grab a share of the country's e-commerce market.
A non-strategic investor like Poonawalla brings in not only capital but also creative freedom. Indian cinema needs more investors like him, reports Vanita Kohli Khandekar.
Much of the discussion is happening at a "family level, not a corporate level". That means it is an Ambani or a Goenka in direct talks with Johar.
The online pharmacy market, which was worth about $512 million in 2018, is growing at a CAGR of 63 per cent and is expected to hit overall revenues of over $3.6 billion by 2022.
While Flipkart and Amazon go on a fund-raising spree, the real battle will begin once big industrial houses such as the Tatas, Reliance and the Aditya Birla group join the race.
India's total online shopper base at 30 per cent of its internet population is low when compared with 78 per cent in China and 70-plus per cent in the US.
RIL is setting up infrastructure for a full-fledged horizontal e-commerce offering - internally called the New Commerce - to simultaneously launch pan-India by October-November.
The legal regime does not permit home delivery of medicines, tough owing to situation of COVID-19 pandemic and an emergency-like situation, the government allowed the home delivery of medicines but it was meant for only neighbourhood pharmacies, AIOCD said.
The expansion into smaller towns is coming at a time when the online retail space has not only seen consolidation but is actually looking to collaborate with physical stores. Abhineet Kumar reports.
The big boys of India's traditional retail have finally come together to fight the onslaught of their online counterparts.
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