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Bharti Wal-Mart To Rope In 35K Farmers In Supply Chain By 2015

November 7, 2010 By 1 Comment

Looking to scale up sourcing of agricultural products from India, the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc today said its joint venture with the Bharti Group here will rope in 35,000 farmers by 2015 to its supply chain.

“We are already making a contribution to India’s agricultural sector by working with a large number of farmers in Punjab. I am pleased to announce that Bharti Wal-Mart would be directly sourcing from 35,000 small and medium farmers by 2015,” Wal-Mart Stores Inc President and CEO Mike T Duke said here at a function organised by Ficci.

At present, the 50:50 cash and carry joint venture, Bharti Wal-Mart, works with 550 farmers in the country. Elaborating on how the company aims to help the farmers, Duke said: “We will help them by providing skills and technology for crop managememnt…By doing all these we hope that the farmers will see at least a 20 per cent increase in their income levels.”

He said the company will also be training the farmers on how to utilise usage of water and fertilisers optimally. “This will benefit one million farmer and farm workers,” Duke added. Commenting on the need for skill upgradation in the retail sector, Duke said the JV will add a third skills training centre in Bangalore in a couple of months.

Bharti Enterprises Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Rajan Bharti Mittal said after the Bangalore centre, another skill centre would be set up at Mohali but did not give a timeline for it. The Bharti Wal-Mart association currently has two training centres located in Amritsar and Delhi in partnership with the respective state governments.

“The target is to train 40,000 students in the next five years and place at least 15,000 students in the next five years,” Duke said. Already 3,400 students have already been certified and 1,100 people have been place in jobs, he added.

Commenting on the need for further opening up of India’s retail sector to FDI, Duke said: “We want to open more and more stores here and contribute in the training and we do stand ready to contribute much more than what we are doing right now if FDI is opened in retail.”

He said Wal-Mart has been encouraged by the government’s positive approach, specially the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) paper that came out in June this year. An inter-ministerial committee is currently evaluating the comments of stakeholders on the paper on opening up the politically-sensitive multi-brand retail sector to foreign direct investment (FDI).

 

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Cash-&-carry gets ready for national rollout

September 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It’s action time in the wholesale cash-and-carry market as multi-brand retailing remains a domestic sport. Existing players Bharti Wal-Mart and Metro Cash & Carry are scaling up operations even as Carrefour and Tesco are drawing out rollout plans.

carrefour

The JV between the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart and Bharti Group, so far confined to Punjab, plans to build a national presence over the next 18 months with outlets in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, MP, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, two people close to the company said.

The company, which took 18 months to open its first store, plans to open 12 outlets next year alone, they said. Wal-Mart’s international rivals, French retailer Carrefour and British firm Tesco, too are finalising their India plans. Carrefour, which has tied up with the country’s largest retailer Future Group for India entry, is reported to have secured properties for cash-an-carry outlets in New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai. And it is expected to open its first store at Seelampur in New Delhi this month.

When contacted, Carrefour India only offered “No comment”. Tesco, which has partnered with Tata Group’s retail firm Trent, plans to invest £60 million in the country. “We will open our first cash-and-carry outlet in India next year,” a Tesco Plc spokesperson said, in response to an e-mail query. The person refused to divulge more details about its Indian plans.

Besides the impressive growth of the market and huge opportunity, these international retailers are also buoyed by the fact that the government has reopened the debate on allowing foreign investment in multi-brand retailing. The country allows 100% foreign investment in wholesale and 51% in single-brand retailing, but none in multi-brand retail. Last month, the Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy sought comments from various stakeholders on different aspects of the subject through a discussion paper posted on its website.

In fact, Bharti Wal-Mart MD and CEO Raj Jain recently said the retailer will open hundreds of stores if the country opened retail to FDI. Technopak Advisors president Raghav Gupta says that the organised retail is a $25-billion market of the $450 billion Indian retail market, and players like Wal-Mart and Metro have only begun to cater to the tip of the iceberg.

With rapid urbanisation and a booming middle-class population, the opportunity is huge and nobody wants to miss it. Not when most of the world is struggling to come out of the recession. It’s not just the retail attraction though. Cash-and-carry is a big business in itself. In fact, Metro Cash & Carry has no intention to get into retail. The company, which runs five outlets in the country, sees huge opportunity in wholesale.

“The potential of the business is huge given the fact that the country has a very large number of kiranas, small restaurants & canteens, and a large number of farmers and small and medium business as suppliers to the industry,” a Metro spokesman said.

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Bharti Retail Targets 1000 crores

December 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

According to a top official of Bharti Retail, post completion of its rollout in northern zone, Bharti Retail will look at expanding in the western and southern zones.

“From January 2011, we will expand in different regions and are considering options now,” Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman and managing director Rajan Bharti Mittal said.

Although we have not finalized the regions yet, but it is a toss between south and west, he told reporters on the sidelines of a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) meeting here.

Bharti Retail currently operates 27 Easy Day stores and 2 Easy day mini hyper markets in Punjab and Haryana.

“We are targeting 200 stores, mostly Easy day by 2011 in the northern region with a 1000cr revenue target. By December the total store count is expected to be 70,” Mr Mittal said.

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Bharti Retail aims for 40% revenues from private labels

December 12, 2009 By 1 Comment
Bharti Retail, the wholly-owned retail arm of Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises, is planning to shore up revenue from private labels at its stores to match the global industry benchmark.

While private labels now account for about 16 per cent of revenue, the company plans to ramp this up to 40 per cent over the next three years. This was indicated by Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman & managing director Rajan Bharti Mittal.

He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of a Ficci meeting in Kolkata on Friday. Iconic US retailer Wal-Mart Stores, Bharti Retail’s JV partner for the cash & carry venture, is also exploring opportunities to source and sell Bharti’s private label brands across Wal-Mart retail outlets globally.

Incidentally, Bharti Retail has already introduced two of Wal-Mart’s top-selling private labels, George (apparel) and Great Value (staples), in its stores.

Bharti Retail operates some 70 outlets across two formats, neighbourhood stores called “Easyday” and compact hypermarket outlets called “Easyday Market”. The joint venture, Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt Ltd, runs a wholesale cash and carry outlet, “Best Price Modern Wholesaleâ”, at Amritsar.

Mr Mittal said all private labels sold in Easyday stores and Best Price Modern Wholesale is sourced out of India.

“As we develop our retail business and partnership with Wal-Mart, there are opportunities to increase the number of Wal-Mart private labels in our stores and sell some of our private labels to Wal-Mart for their global operations. We are looking at such cross-pollination of business,” he said.

Mr Mittal said Wal-Mart sources products from India worth nearly $1 billion for its global operations. “However, more than 90 per cent of the products which will be sold through the Best Price Modern Wholesale outlets will be sourced from India,” he said.

Bharti Retail is also in track with its expansion plans to set up 200 Easyday stores by December 2010. Next year, it plans to roll out stores in Rajasthan, the National Capital Region, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

“We plan to enter into either south or west India in 2010 in line with our plan to generate Rs 1,000-crore revenue from the retail business by fiscal 2011,” said Mr Mittal.

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Bharti Wal-Mart looks at South, West to open stores

October 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

BANGALORE:  Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt Ltd is exploring the possibility of opening wholesale, B2B and cash and carry retail stores in southern and western region of the country, a company official said on Monday.

The joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, currently has a store in Amritsar and another is also expected to come up in Punjab by December, officials said.

“After north, the discussion is really south or west. We believe southern markets are much more growth oriented”, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Enterprises, Rajan Bharti Mittal told reporters here.

Ecosystem (in the south) is far better than the north when the company started operations there, he added. “Hopefully, south will see some action from us. We have to be a pan-India company”.

“….we are already looking at real estate pieces here in southern and western parts (of the country). It (opening stores) depends on how real estate plays its game”, Mittal said.

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