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Office Depot Partners to Enter India Market

April 22, 2008

Office Depot and Reliance Retail Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, India's largest private sector enterprise, announced that they have entered into a joint venture to provide office products and services to business customers in India. This marks the entry of Office Depot into India, one of the top 15 office product markets in the world.

To accelerate the rollout of their joint venture, Office Depot and Reliance also announced the acquisition of eOfficePlanet, one of the largest dealers of office products and services to corporate customers in India.

eOfficePlanet provides a full range of national and private brand office products and solutions to its customers, serving India's many blue chip and multinational corporations. The Company offers a broad array of business consumables including office stationery and supplies; office technology; printing solutions; corporate gifting and promotional products; break room, canteen, pantry and janitorial supplies; and other items across India's largest cities.

The joint venture will combine the global resources of Office Depot with the local market knowledge and resources of Reliance Retail Limited to establish a sophisticated supply chain network and enhance eOfficePlanet's merchandising and sourcing capabilities.

"The joint venture with Reliance and strategic acquisition of eOfficePlanet will put Office Depot in a leadership position in India," said Charles Brown, President of Office Depot's International Division. "eOfficePlanet is the market leader in the fast-growing Indian office supplies industry, with high brand recognition among the procurement decision makers in large corporate organizations. Our new relationship will provide Office Depot with a platform to both serve our existing global customers who have operations in India and to expand our offering to all business customers in India."

"Reliance Retail has embarked on an ambitious plan to transform the retail market in India. To provide a range of options for business customers, we have partnered with Office Depot. This partnership reflects a powerful combination of category leading expertise and global sourcing capabilities of Office Depot with the immense distribution reach and deep customer understanding that Reliance Retail has achieved," said Bijou Kurien, President and CEO of Lifestyle for Reliance Retail.

Sreenivas Nagappa will serve as Country Manager for Office Depot India, based in eOfficePlanet's Mumbai headquarters. Shyam Barilits-Gupta, who currently serves as CEO of eOfficePlanet, will continue as part of the management team within eOfficePlanet.

"There is tremendous opportunity for growth in India's office supply market to support a fast-growing economy of entrepreneurs, small businesses and multinational corporations," Nagappa noted. "We look forward to working closely with our customers to offer them a diverse assortment of quality name brand and exclusive brand products."

About eOfficePlanet

eOfficePlanet was founded in 1999 and is the largest contract stationer in India. The Company is headquartered in Mumbai, has its operations hub in Navi Mumbai, and operates sales offices and distribution centers across the country, with principal operations in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Noida, Pune and Kolkata.

About Reliance Retail Limited

Reliance Retail Limited (RRL), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited opened its first retail store in November 2006 and today operates over 500 stores in over 49 cities spanning over 3.5 million Sq ft. RRL is a multi-format retailer that operates Reliance Fresh - a neighborhood store concept, Reliance Digital - a Consumer Durables and Information Technology concept, Reliance Mart - a Hyper Market concept, Reliance Trends - an apparel specialty concept, Reliance Wellness - a health, wellness & beauty concept , Reliance iStore- an Apple specialty store concept, Reliance Footprint -a footwear concept, Reliance Jewels - a jewelry concept, Reliance Time-Out- a books, music & entertainment concept, Reliance Super- a Minimart concept and Reliance Autozone - an automotive specialty concept.

About Reliance Industries Limited

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is India's largest private sector company on all major financial parameters with turnover of Rs1,18,354 crore (US$ 27.23 billion), cash profit of Rs17,678 crore (US $4.07 billion), net profit of Rs11,943 crore (US$ 2.75 billion) and net worth of Rs63,967 crore (US$ 14.72 billion) as of March 31, 2007. RIL is the first and only private sector company from India to feature in the Fortune Global 500 list of 'World's Largest Corporations' and ranks amongst the world's Top 200 companies in terms of profits. RIL is amongst the 25 fastest climbers ranked by Fortune. RIL also features in the Forbes Global list of world's 400 best big companies and in FT Global 500 list of world's largest