Ten days after it bought a majority stake in online pharmacy retailer Netmeds, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Saturday said it had sealed a deal to acquire the retail business of the financially-stressed Future Group for Rs 24,713 crore. The transaction, which has been in the works for months, will fortify RIL’s retail play in one of the world’s largest economies where it is already the largest player by reach, scale, revenue and profitability. The contours of the deal include Future first combining its various entities across grocery retail, apparel retail, supply chain, logistics infrastructure and consumer products manufacturing with Future Enterprises, which is into manufacturing of fashion products. It will then sell the retail and wholesale businesses covering the Big Bazaar hypermarket chain, Easyday grocery stores, Central malls and the Brand Factory fashion discount outlets to RIL. Future Enterprises will also transfer the logistics and warehousing businesses to RIL. The businesses will be transferred on a slump sale basis. Slump sale means transfer of a division of a company for a lump sum without assigning any values to individual assets and liabilities of the entity. RIL has routed the proposed deal through its subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures, which reported a consolidated turnover of Rs 1.6 lakh crore and profit of Rs 5,448 crore in fiscal 2020.