Friday, December 7, 2012

Move ‘back’ men!

Reliance needs to engage with a global partner for its back end

The travails of Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), have been the stuff of corporate legends. But he is in more than a spot of bother at the moment. A glance at the financial results of Reliance Industries for the quarter ending December 2008 reveals that its net profits stood at Rs.350.1 million as opposed to Rs.807.9 million recorded last year – a drastic fall of 56.67%. While RIL’s petroleum business got pummelled last year (as many as 1,432 petrol pumps were shut); the retail business too is not giving a moment’s relief. After deferring the launch of its wholesale market earlier, Reliance Retail finally scrapped its cash & carry (C&C) model and showed the door to the entire team of 36 professionals headed by Harsh Bahadur (erstwhile CEO of Metro AG’s C&C business in India). This was followed by news that Reliance Retail is planning to shut down 40 of its non-performing stores and rationalising its retail space of around 4.2 million sq. ft. In 2008, Reliance Retail axed almost 600 support jobs to manage costs. It was also speculated that the back-end operations as well as management of its hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores would be merged to cut costs. Will Mukesh’s Rs.250 billion retail venture be able to sustain?


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPMMalay Chaudhuri

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