Fashion is Reliance Retail’s ace in the hole

Reliance Retail is India’s biggest fashion and lifestyle business. Now it wants to take on Flipkart-Myntra in online sales.

It was the early 1980s. Dhirubhai Ambani had just stepped into the limelight. His company, Reliance Industries Ltd, had begun enlisting celebrities for its “Only Vimal” advertisements on TV, which had only recently gone colour in India. 

Vimal, the company’s textile brand spanning suit fabrics to saris, had shot to prominence out of nowhere, weathering competition from long established brands like Bombay Dyeing, Raymond and Grasim. Probably because Reliance spared no expense on its promotion, airing ads mostly on Doordarshan’s prime time slots.

But Dhirubhai’s overriding ambition at that point was to build a petrochemicals and refining business in the …

Author

T Surendar

Surendar helps lead the newsroom at The Morning Context as executive editor. Over the years, Surendar has worked in industries from pharmaceuticals to diamonds, as well as a stint as an equity analyst. In his long career as a business journalist, he has led teams at The Times of India, India Today and Fortune India. He was part of the founding team at Forbes India and interned at and published in The Times, London.

Executive Editor

surendar@mailtmc.com

Mumbai