India's biggest retailer Reliance will acquire dozens of small grocery and non-food brands as it targets building its own $6.5 billion consumer goods business.
Reliance, run by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, plans to build a portfolio of 50 to 60 grocery, household and personal care brands within six months.
The consumer goods push under a vertical named Reliance Retail Consumer. Brands will come on top of Ambani's brick-and-mortar store network of more than 2,000 grocery outlet.
It is hiring an army of distributors to take them to mom-and-pop stores. Its ongoing expansion of "JioMart" e-commerce operations in India's nearly $900 billion retail market, one of world's biggest.
Reliance is in final stages of negotiations with around 30 popular niche local consumer brands to fully acquire them or form joint venture partnerships for sale.
The total investment outlay planned by the company to acquire brands isn't clear. Reliance had set a goal to achieve 500 billion rupees of annual sales from the business within 5 years.