JEFF BEZOS and Mukesh Ambani, two of the world’s richest men, face a turning point in a battle for preeminence in India’s booming, nearly trillion-dollar retail market.

The outcome of a legal dispute which has embroiled the billionaires’ Amazon.com and Reliance Industries Ltd. empires, where a court ruling is imminent, may shape India’s retail landscape for years to come.

The winner in the fight for Future Retail Ltd., Amazon’s estranged local partner, will get pole position in the race to meet the daily needs of more than a billion people.

Accusations of insider trading and contractual breaches, as well as nationalistic cries to keep the U.S. giant at bay, mark the high-stakes fight, which has snowballed from what began as a dispute between Amazon and Future.

If Amazon succeeds, it may slow Reliance’s plans to expand its e-commerce and brick-and-mortar operations. If Amazon loses, its hopes of expanding its interests in India’s second-largest retailer and cashing in on its key grocery supply chain will be dashed, industry insiders say.

Amazon is trying to stop Reliance’s US$3.4 billion purchase of Future Group’s retail assets. The U.S. company, which won an injunction from an arbitrator to block the Reliance-Future deal, accuses its partner of breaching some pre-existing agreements, misleading the public and insider trading. Future denies the allegations.

Bezos’s behemoth is a formidable foe, but Ambani has a history as a disrupter. He has shaken foreign telecom firms by offering dirt-cheap data. Industry executives see his e-commerce plans as a threat for Amazon and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart.

“If Reliance moves faster and faster, obviously it’ll become very difficult for anyone else to gain,” said Himanshu Bajaj, head of consulting firm Kearney’s India retail practice.

Reliance, seeking to expand its JioMart e-commerce business, this month completed a US$6.4 billion fundraising by selling a stake in its retail arm to such investors as Silver Lake Partners and KKR & Co.

India’s retail market will grow 46 percent over the next four years to an annual US$1.3 trillion, reckons Forrester Research. The key battle is over groceries, expected to be worth around US$740 billion a year by 2024.

Founded by Kishore Biyani, dubbed India’s retail king, Future transformed the country’s retailing in recent decades, before COVID-19 hit the business so hard this year that Biyani was forced to find a new buyer.(SD-Agencies)