JioMart and Milkbasket merger is confirmed by Reliance

31 Jul 2023 , 02:28 AM

 A Milkbasket spokesperson responded to ETRetail’s inquiry about rumours that Reliance Retail planned to discontinue Milkbasket and launch a new ‘Jio Smart Daily’ platform by saying that the brand has started the process of integrating with its e-commerce arm JioMart.

The representative stated, ‘The company is being connected with JioMart, which is our e-commerce platform.

Reiterating the same, a source in the business claimed that ‘Reliance plans to rebrand the Milkbasket application and focus only on promoting a single Jio brand.’

According to media accounts, 600 employees at Milkbasket, or around 25–30% of the whole workforce, have lost their jobs in recent months. ETRetail was unable to directly confirm the number of layoffs, but news reports claimed that the entire offline marketing, sales, and head office staff were affected.

A spokesperson for Milkbasket declined to announce any layoffs, saying, ‘As part of the integration, there may be some realignment/reallocation of roles across functions within the group, but we are not laying off any employee.’

In addition, the company’s sole co-founder Yatish Talvadia, COO Abhinav Imandi, and CFO Gaurav Srivastava all left the organisation in March of this year. The aforementioned employees’ LinkedIn profiles have verified the departures.

After being purchased by Reliance Retail, the brand, which had previously only been available in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Delhi, aggressively increased its geographic reach to roughly 30 locations. The retail behemoth announced the purchase of a 96.49% share in Milkbasket in its Q2 FY22 earnings.

But starting in January of this year, the business scaled back its operations in the newly entered locations and combined those with its current markets.

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