Reliance Petroleum Retail Outlets Died in Smoke! Reborn in Fog!

Abstract

The Reliance Industries Ltd. {RIL}, which had recently made a giant leap in the retail petroleum market in India, had launched its new venture in retail petroleum market during 2004 in an unprecedented style with nearly 1500 petroleum retail outlets throughout India with ever tested strategy of guaranteed quantity and quality. But, dream to be pioneer in this new arena where public sector units are nearly enjoying the absolute advantages of government continuous favor in many forms of direct and indirect supports scattered down within 3 years. Thus the RIL looked and tried for its other alternatives which can at least make huge investment working to give some sigh of relief to the stake holders. But, again the proposed alternatives did not turn up as per the expectations. This was another setback for the company. In 2009, the Government of India (GoI) decided to go ahead with the Kirit Parikh panel's recommendation to have free market pricing in petrol which gave a new ray of hope to overcome from the turmoil of 'to be ' or 'not to be' with the challenging front of subsidies still being given to the PSUs in the market. This paper discusses this strategic dilemma of the RIL.