Big Bazaar to reopen as Reliance Retail stores next week; Mukesh Ambani takes over 200 Future retail outlets
Big Bazaar to reopen as Reliance Retail stores next week; Mukesh Ambani takes over 200 Future retail outlets
Known to be the country’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail will be getting a good boost in its operating system, when the billionaire, Mukesh Ambani, asks the Reliance Group to take full control of the future business proceedings. Most of the Big Bazar stores have been shut down during the weekend of lockdown, along with their online operations.
Reliance Retail has decided to reopen their reliance retail stores in the upcoming week. The company, Reliance, is preparing itself for taking over the flagship supermarkets by Future Group. If counted, there would be around 200 stores, under Reliance, and they are already in the process of taking up new stock, engaging in rebranding and in the process of transferring 30,000 goods for sale, along with the employees. Among the 200 stores, some will open up in two days.
The Future e-commerce mobile application, along with the website, was not available online for the people, “We regret to inform you that currently, stores are non-operational for 2 days.” This was the response that Big Bazar gave on social media, namely Twitter, to all the customers who complained about the closing of the stores.
Reliance had decided to change the image of its new stores just after the company failed to make their payments to the stores that were closed. The Future Group has also holding more than 1,700 outlets and Reliance will be opening 200 of their own stores.
In the year, 2020, the owners of the stores had started to deal with rental agreements with the Future Group. Further, the agreement was signed by Mukesh Ambani- who ran the company of Reliance Retail and later, it was given to the Future Group. The Reliance group has already transferred some of the property of the existing stores to the group of Biyani’s firm, since the Future group could not cover the costs.
In a stock exchange list done on Saturday, Future Retail Group said that they received the termination notice for a number of their retail stores because of how the stores were not able to pay the rent. The amount of outstanding payment was enormous.
Action was taken by the RIL in order to preserve their reputation and maintain the value of the name, Future Retail, and also allow the scheme that the Future Group had come up with – the plan of selling their retail stores, the logistics along with their warehouse added to the big group of Reliance Retail for almost the amount of Rs. 25,000 Crore in the year, 2020.
The Delhi High Court has been hearing four cases of the legal battle between the Future Group and the e-commerce primary dealer, Amazon.com. The hearing of the case is set for Monday. The Amazon organization group is already struggling with their situation, so keeping this aspect in mind, the Reliance group has decided to take over their new stores without having any kind of judgements passed or presenting the matter in the court.
Mukesh Ambani has decided to take over the operations of at least 200 of their stores of Future Retail group and has provided new opportunities for jobs to their employees after the Kishore Biyani’s group failed to make the required rent payments to the specific landlords.
A majority of other stocks have been supplied to these stores by Reliance Jiomart because Future Retail Limited has not been able to clear out the dues of all the existing suppliers of their companies. Reliance has planned to possibly exchange or replace the big e-commerce Big Bazar with their new brands.
Although this act has been argued upon, with the e-commerce platform of Amazon.com, as they claimed that the Future group had broken the terms and conditions of the offer that was made in 2019.
The Reliance group has been trying to follow up the failed efforts from the year of 2020, in order to close off their billions of deals, so that they can buy the property of the Future Group, their existing partner. On the other hand, the e-commerce Amazon has blocked the process of transaction of any further payments.
Due to the pandemic of COVID-19, a lot of trouble was caused to the company because it was difficult for them to pay the rent of the properties of their retail stores. On the other hand, the RRVL had started taking up the stock and had already initiated the process of creating a new image for the stores. According to some sources, it has already paid some amount of the properties to ensure that they have the property in their possession.
In one of the agreements by Future Retail, the firm said that it would be easier to meet the required earnings of the particular business but because of the ongoing litigations with the e-commerce company, Amazon.com, the company was not able to meet the expectations, and then it planned to discharge all kinds of duty to the specific banks or lenders.
“The company is scaling down its operations, which will help us in reducing their losses in the coming months. The company is proposing to expand it’s online business along with its home delivery business, to increase its reach to the customers”, the company has stated this in their agreement. The agreement process also led to the discovery of the difficult faced by the company to finance the working capital’s needs and requirements.
Big losses at the physical store level is much more concerning and becomes a cycle, leading large operations into more debt. The Future Retail has undergone a loss of Rs. 4,445 crore, in their last four quarters.
The Business Standard group has also started reviewing the offer letter given to them by Reliance SMSL, to Future Group employees. The Reliance SMSL has started their process of giving out the letter of making the improvements to the Future Group employees since the 25th of February. The pandemic has caused problems to a lot of business ventures, among which, Big Bazar is the one that has faced a good amount of problems because the pandemic closed down the offline as well as the online doors of services.
