Brands
Cleartrip hijacks your Google Calendar to stop you missing long weekends
MUMBAI: Long weekends are meant for escape. Instead, they slip by unnoticed, buried under emails and spreadsheets. Cleartrip has a fix: hack the very tool that schedules your drudgery.
The Indian online travel agent has launched its Long Weekend Tracker, an industry-first feature that maps every extended break in 2026 directly onto Google Calendar. The campaign promises to ambush travellers with reminders two to three weeks before each long weekend, turning hustle tools into holiday tools.
The logic is simple. Everyone romanticises long weekends, few plan for them. By integrating travel prompts into one of the world’s most-used productivity apps, Cleartrip plants itself at the exact moment intent forms. Calendar events include embedded links to flights, buses and hotels, letting users move from daydream to booking with a single tap.
“We want travel to stay on your mind all year, not just when leaves pile up or life becomes unbearable,” said Govind Bansal, head of marketing at Cleartrip. “Even if travellers forget, Cleartrip won’t, because we won’t let you escape a great escape from your daily routine.”
March 2026 has the most long weekends, making it prime season for getaways, whether short bus trips or longer international flights. By owning long weekends as a planning trigger, Cleartrip is betting it can shift behaviour from reactive to proactive, building consideration across its entire platform.
The tracker works in four steps: download Google Calendar, click Cleartrip’s link (https://cleartrip-web.app. Cleartrip, acquired by Flipkart in 2021, recently emerged as India’s number two online travel agent. With the Long Weekend Tracker, it is positioning itself as the nudge that won’t shut up. Whether that proves helpful or annoying depends on how badly you need a holiday. Either way, your calendar now knows better than you do.
Brands
Reliance Retail FY26 revenue rises 11.8 Per Cent to Rs 3.7 lakh crore
Q4 revenue up 11.1 Per Cent, hyperlocal orders surge 4x, PAT steady
MUMBAI: Reliance Retail isn’t just ringing up sales, it’s ringing doorbells faster than ever. Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) reported a steady FY26 performance, with growth powered by store expansion, a sharp surge in hyperlocal commerce, and consistent traction across grocery, fashion and jewellery. For the full year, revenue rose 11.8 per cent year-on-year to Rs 3,70,026 crore. In the January–March quarter, revenue from operations climbed 11.1 per cent to Rs 87,344 crore, up from Rs 78,622 crore a year earlier.
Operating performance remained stable, with Q4 EBITDA inching up 3.1 per cent YoY to Rs 6,921 crore from Rs 6,711 crore. However, quarterly profit after tax held steady at Rs 3,563 crore. For the full fiscal, PAT grew 11.7 per cent to Rs 13,842 crore.
Expansion remained a key lever. RRVL added 1,564 new stores during FY26, while simultaneously scaling its digital and hyperlocal commerce play. The latter emerged as a standout, with daily orders surging more than fourfold year-on-year in Q4, underlining a clear shift towards faster, localised fulfilment.
In grocery, large-format stores maintained momentum, aided by festive demand and the expansion of Smart Bazaar, which crossed 1,000 stores. Promotional campaigns such as ‘Full Paisa Vasool’ delivered record results, with sales rising 26 per cent YoY.
Digital commerce also picked up pace. JioMart added 5.8 million new users in Q4, nearly doubling its registered base year-on-year. Hyperlocal orders grew 29 per cent sequentially and over 300 per cent annually during the quarter.
Fashion and lifestyle saw steady traction. Ajio recorded a 23 per cent YoY rise in average bill value, while fast-fashion platform Shein crossed 11 million app installs, scaling rapidly with expanding product lines.
The jewellery business added further shine, with average bill value jumping 53 per cent YoY, largely driven by rising gold prices and sustained consumer demand.
Commenting on the shift, RRVL executive director Isha Ambani said hyperlocal commerce has become a structural growth driver, with orders rising more than fourfold over the year.
Looking ahead to FY27, the company is betting on technology to deepen engagement. The focus, Ambani noted, will be on AI-led merchandising, sharper pricing strategies and disciplined execution turning scale into sustained customer value.
In short, the carts are fuller, the clicks are quicker, and the next phase looks less about reach and more about precision.
