RFID Journal is reporting on Reliance Retail's RFID Plans.

Reliance Retail, one of India's largest retailers, has been testing RFID technology and is preparing applications for use at a large number of its hypermarkets and supermarkets, as well as its electronics and convenience stores. The company has already equipped these stores with data ports and wireless computer networks able to support RFID systems.

...

Reliance Retail has drawn up plans for using RFID to support its operations. The company has developed five RFID-deployment scenarios, including the tracking of reusable crates of fresh food; item- and case-level tracking of high-value goods; and pallet and case tagging of various goods.

Reliance has performed proof-of-concept tests using passive EPC Gen 2 UHF RFID tags to track crates of fresh foods and cases of high-value goods. The company managed to achieve above 90 percent read rates and found that RFID helped it reduce shipping and receiving errors while increasing productivity. For the test to track individual items and cases of high-value goods, Reliance Retail has recently conducted a pilot between one distribution center and one Reliance Digital store. This pilot is still under evaluation. Reliance is now working with various RFID hardware and tag suppliers to obtain improved read rates for the tracking of fresh-food crates, as well as planning a permanent rollout of other scenarios upon successful completion of the pilots.

With Reliance Retail's plans to have their own supply chains, Reliance could very well be the first retailer in India to implement RFID across stores and it's supply chain.