The global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is foraying into custom-made software and IT implementation services to tap the booming organised retail industry in India.
From the Sensex basket, Tata Consultancy Services, Nestle, Bajaj Finserv, Wipro, Maruti Suzuki India, Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro and NTPC were the major laggards. Tata Steel, Bajaj Finance, JSW Steel and Bharti Airtel were among the gainers.
In October, media reports suggested that the World's largest retailer Wal-Mart made "suspicious payments" totalling millions of dollars to local officials in India.
Global retail giant Wal-Mart is in talks with several domestic textile firms for its Indian operation, which is expected to begin next year
With confidence creeping back into the market place and rentals down up to 50 per cent, large retailers are back to drawing up aggressive growth plans. In the next one year, Aditya Birla Retail, Bharti Enterprises, Reliance Retail, Trent, Mahindra Retail and others hope to open new stores spread over five million square feet.
The two JV partners have undertaken an empowerment initiative for Indian women entrepreneurs, having set a target of impacting the lives of 25,000 women by 2016. They have also said they will substantially increase sourcing from women-owned businesses in India.
The way the story went, customers would get dramatically lower prices for everyday groceries (something that takes up 45 per cent of the household budget) and farmers would earn at least a third or more as big retailers began procuring from them directly. But none of this has really happened, and may not either.
It's certainly not the way the world' s largest retailer would have wanted to enter India. But it's nonetheless a turning point for the Indian retail market.
Walmart's JV with Bharti hinges on policy clarity
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have already announced plans to enter the milk-based beverages segment in the country. Reliance Retail, which has entered the diary segment with Dairy Pure, its milk brand, may also expand into niche categories. Industry observers believe that Bharti Retail may also be working its way towards marking an entry into the dairy space.
Telecom major Bharti and world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Monday signed an agreement to form a joint venture for their wholesale cash and carry business.
Rejecting the demand of global retailers like Walmart, the government on Wednesday said there is no plan to relax the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing norms for foreign players in the multi-brand retail sector.
The sale of Nature's Basket, Godrej's chain of food stores in west India, is the second exit by a big group in a year in the category
Walmart is happy with its current partnership with Bharti.
Sources estimated the number of employees asked to leave because of downsizing stands at about 100.
Sellers, especially the smaller ones, are planning to go to court as well as move CCI as they fear that Walmart could bring multiple private labels in India and flood the e-commerce platform with its own products.
"We have examined the Bharti-Wal-Mart joint venture and everything is in conformity with the existing policy on FDI in retail," high-level sources in the commerce and industry ministry said.
Retail investors shunned the Bharti Infratel initial public offering.
Capital expenditure by Indian companies is likely to see an uptick in the upcoming quarters as capacity utilisation has surpassed the critical threshold of 75 per cent, and numerous companies have deleveraged their balance sheets, according to analysts. The first quarter of the current financial year has shown improved profitability, driven by a decrease in input prices. This, according to analysts at Care Ratings, should stimulate a revival in the private capex cycle.
The move is likely to hit Bharti-Walmart, the 50:50 joint venture between the US' Walmart and Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Group that operates cash-and-carry outlets in India, the most.
American retail major Walmart has snapped ties with Indian partner Bharti but its plans to enter the country's multi-brand retail space appears intact.
Former Walmart India head Raj Jain has been roped in as an advisor by the Bharti Group, which on Wednesday parted ways with the US retail giant to operate stores independently in India.
While Bharti's retail stores will be fully Indian, they will be able to take advantage of the tremendously low prices and technology advantages that Wal-Mart will bring to Mittal-Mart's sourcing.
RBI's exercise will take into account standards of governance, the viability of the payment bank (PB) business model, and changes, if any, if needed.
Coming under flak by the Left parties for Wal-Mart's entry into the Indian retail market, Bharti Enterprises on Friday said its tie-up with the US firm was "as per the guidelines".
The potential of India's retail sector may be huge and growing, but soaring rentals, salaries and interest rates could make the journey a bumpy ride for retailers in the near term.
Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt Ltd, the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and retail giant Wal-Mart, opened its first cash-and-carry (wholesale) store in India at Amritsar.
The Union Cabinet in its decision of November 24, which has since been put on hold, permitted 51 per cent FDI in the multi-brand retail, well above expectations of the Walmart and its Indian joint venture partner -- Bharti Group.
She said that she had apprised BJP president Nitin Gadkari of her plan of action.
Asking the government to tweak FDI norms in multi-brand segment, retailers said sourcing rules must be made similar to that of single brand while demanding foreign firms be allowed to put only 50 per cent of first tranche of investment in back-end infrastructure.
Middle-class Indian consumers should, of course, sit back and watch the action on the shop floor.
In a letter dated November 30, the PMO asked the commerce ministry to prepare a detailed note on the venture, in the anticipation that it would come up for discussion in Parliament.
Bharti Teletech on Tuesday launched an SMS phone that enables sending and receiving short messaging service (SMS) from fixed-line phones.\n\n
Reliance Retail, already creating ripples in the organised domestic retail market, is poised to acquire smaller rivals in order to take on serious competition from the likes of Bharti-Wal-Mart combine.
Profit taking in Bajaj Finance, Nestle, Kotak Bank, SBI, Bharti Airtel L&T and Asian Paints also weighed on the benchmark index. Maruti bucked the trend by gaining 1.73 per cent after strong retails sales in September. Power Grid, M&M. JSW Steel and Tata Steel also advanced.
Bharti and Wal-Mart JV will be critical for the US giant to study the Indian scenario.
From the Sensex pack, ITC, Titan, Asian Paints, Reliance, Tata Steel, Bajaj Finserv, Axis Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, Bajaj Finance, Nestle and ICICI Bank were the major gainers. Kotak Mahindra Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, HCL Technologies, State Bank of India, Bharti Airtel and Tata Motors were among the laggards.
Bharti Enterprises has had a joint venture with Walmart in the wholesale trade for years in India.
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