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 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.
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.
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.
Walmart's JV with Bharti hinges on policy clarity
Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty hit their fresh record levels on Thursday after lower inflation numbers raised hopes of an interest rate cut by the RBI. Besides, heavy buying in capital goods, consumer durable and industrial stocks also helped the indices, traders said. Retail inflation continued its downward slide to reach a one-year low of 4.75 per cent in May due to a marginal decline of prices in the food basket and remained within the Reserve Bank's comfort zone of below 6 per cent, according to government data released on Wednesday.
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.
Stock markets will be driven by quarterly earnings by index majors, global trends and the RBI's interest rate decision this week after digesting news on budget proposals and US Federal policy outcome, say analysts. The trading activity of foreign investors and the movement of global oil benchmark Brent crude would also dictate trends in equities. "On the domestic front, the MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting is scheduled from February 6-8.
Tata Group remained India's largest business conglomerate in market capitalisation in calendar year 2023 while the Mukesh Ambani camp raced ahead of the Adani businesses to become the second-largest. The Tata companies ended 2023 with a combined group market capitalisation of Rs 28.68 trillion, up 35 per cent from the Rs 21.2 trillion at the end of December 2022. Ambani's group mcap is Rs 19.42 trillion at the end of CY23, up 10.7 per cent from the Rs 17.6 trillion a year ago.
Sources estimated the number of employees asked to leave because of downsizing stands at about 100.
Walmart is happy with its current partnership with Bharti.
"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.
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
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.
Retail investors shunned the Bharti Infratel initial public offering.
Stock markets will be driven by domestic inflation data, ongoing quarterly earnings from corporates and global trends this week, analysts said. News flows around the general election would also be tracked by investors, market experts said.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Middle-class Indian consumers should, of course, sit back and watch the action on the shop floor.
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.
'India's top companies currently lack the organisational wherewithal to hire and train 2 million interns annually, given their current scale of operations and existing employee base.'
'Primary buyers are commercial taxi and fleet operators and small businessmen.' 'CNG prices have been remarkably stable unlike petrol.'
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
Debt-saddled telecom operator Vodafone Idea Ltd's Rs 18,000 crore follow-on offering (FPO) opened to a modest response on Thursday with just 26 per cent of shares on offer being sought by investors. Of the 1,260 crore shares on offer, 331.24 crore was subscribed on Thursday, according to information on the BSE. Qualified institutional buyers picked up 61 per cent of their 360 crore shares reserved for them while non-institutional investors sought 28 per cent out of 270 crore shares earmarked for them.
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.
This year's tally is the second best ever after 2022 when 16 firms raised Rs 40,311 crore, led by LIC's biggest-ever IPO.
Bharti and Wal-Mart JV will be critical for the US giant to study the Indian scenario.
Bharti group on Tuesday announced a whopping $13 billion investment for the next five years of which at least 70 per cent would go into expansion of domestic telecom operations
