The retailing arm of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance group, Reliance Retail is all set to establish 60 iStores, an exclusive Apple products reseller format, across the country by next three years (2011).

After kicking off iStore in Jaipur, its first in North India and fourth in India after Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, Ajay Baijal, Reliance Industries (CDIT Business) CEO stated that iStore would house a complete variety of Apple products for professional as well as consumer sections including iMac consumer desktop computers, MacBook consumer notebooks, Mac pro and iPods.

Besides, the iStores will also house more than 500 accessories and peripherals complementing Apple products.

Phone, at present, is available in European and the US market, and Apple is yet to launch the product in Asia.

Typically covering a carpet area of between 2,000 sft and 3,000 sft, each iStore would involve an investment of around Rs 2,500 per sft. The company expects to do a business of Rs 50,000 per sft a year.
 
“We aim to garner revenues to the tune of $5 billion (around Rs 20,000 crore) from Reliance Digital by 2012,” Mr. Baijal added.
The company has also decided to set up 150 outlets of ‘Reliance Digital’, its consumer electronic concept mega store, across the country by 2009. Presently, it owns 5 stores in this format.

Reliance Retail Limited (RRL), is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, which in 18 months since beginning its front-end retail operations in November, 2006, has set up over 600 multi format retail stores across 57 cities, in 13 states across the country.