Reliance Industries Limited on Friday formally launched its first set of 11 pilot stores in Hyderabad marking its entry into the country’s retail market that is growing by 8 per cent, valued at $25 billion.

Reliance Retail Limited (RRL) which is rolling out retail stores aims at launching them in five more cities by the year end, with plans of taking the retail stores to 784 urban areas including top 70 cities and towns in the country besides over 6,000 rural mandi towns across the country by 2010 or 2011, with over 100 million square feet of retail space.

By 2011, the RRL intends to set up world class distribution centres, warehouses and cold storages. The roll-out of Reliance Fresh would be followed by other formats— a nation wide chain of hyper markets, supermarkets, discount stores, departmental stores, convenience stores and speciality stores. "This will entail an investment of more than Rs 25,000 crore in the next five years, and we are aiming at a revenues of Rs 1,00,000 crore by 2011," said RIL president and CEO (Operations and Strategy) Mr Raghu Pillai. The company however sought to assure the petty traders and small retailers that it’s new product (retail store) was no threat to them. The company’s intention is not to harm small retail players. There is a wrong notion that kirana merchants would be adversely affected by reliance retail stores), but this theory is not supported by numbers.

The first of the retail outlets christened "Reliance Fresh" was inaugurated at Banjara Hills by a customer as was the case with remaining outlets at different places in the city.

The nation’s top IT names, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Chief Executive S Ramadorai, Satyam Chairman B Ramalingaraju, and NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik are expected to speak on IT’s potential and the State’s preparedness in the sector at the Investor Summit, in Ahmedabad on December 1.

The summit, dedicated to the Information Technology (IT) sector, is being organised on the lines of Vibrant Gujarat Global Investor meet, by the Science and Technology department. Other speakers at the day-long seminar will include BPO IBM-Daksha Chief Operating Officer Pavan Vaishya, Syntel head Bharat Desai, and Sasken Technologies Chairman Rajiv Modi.

Coming, as it does, close on the heels of the State’s newly released IT policy, the summit is expected to generate business interest in the State’s IT infrastructure. Officials of the Science and Technology Department hope to reap rich dividends, with more than 300 IT and ITES related companies being invited for the show.

‘‘People do not know that Gujarat boasts of the best possible IT infrastructure in the country, possibly because of our late start. But now we have enough muscle and are pushing for our deserved share,’’ explained Gujarat Informatics Limited Services Manager, N D Panchal. Though officials refuse to divulge figures, MoUs for a number of IT projects would be signed during the event.

Source: Expressindia.com