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.
Reliance Industries Ltd will acquire German firm Metro AG's wholesale operations in India for Rs 2,850 crore as the conglomerate run by billionaire Mukesh Ambani seeks to strengthen its dominant position in India's mammoth retail sector. "Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd, signed definitive agreements to acquire a 100 per cent equity stake in Metro Cash & Carry India for a total cash consideration of Rs 2,850 crore, subject to closing adjustments," said a joint statement. Through this acquisition, Reliance Retail will get access to a network of Metro India stores located in prime locations across key cities, along with a large base of registered kiranas and other institutional customers, and a strong supplier network.
'We want to achieve overall profitability, and then we would go for an IPO.'
Walmart is happy with its current partnership with Bharti.
While global competitors Amazon and Walmart are looking to explore B2B online in India, traditional Indian retailers like the Future group and Reliance Retail and e-commerce players such as Snapdeal and Flipkart have no immediate plans in this area.
Bharti Retail on Friday announced appointments of former head of Walmart India Raj Jain as its CEO and Pankaj Madan, another senior executive of erstwhile joint venture Bharti Walmart, as Chief Financial Officer.
Here's a list of allegations of corporate governance failure by MNCs in India.
Ajit Balakrishnan offers a thinking man's guide to the state of ecom in a nation of shopkeepers.
Apple's online launch is a symbol of success for FDI in single-brand retail, though there's no indication of how much the Silicon Valley major would invest in the country.
AV Birla Group chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla and the chief executive officer of Aditya Birla Retail, Sumant Sinha bare the details, in this open-ended conversation, about their plans for Aditya Birla Retail.
Retailers present in India are in talks with Carrefour to buy its assets piecemeal, rather than the whole business.
Global retail behemoths seem to have read the signals right.
The committee met the representatives of Walmart Asia as well as those of Bharti Walmart Private Ltd, the company's Indian joint venture with Bharti group, along with their counsel in New Delhi.
Tesco, which has sought the government's permission to buy 50 per cent stake in Tatas-owned Trent Hypermarket Ltd, will have to invest atleast $55 million in creation of fresh back-end infrastructure.
With expectations of customers changing and demand for seamless, uninterrupted shopping increasing, tech companies are now using this fear of becoming irrelevant as a sales pitch to sell their products to traditional retailers.
It is a myth that FDI in retail will kill at local kirana stores.
Investment by US PE firm KKR will add fire to Ambani's battle for dominance in the retail market that is also being eyed by Jeff Bezos' Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart.
RIL is setting up infrastructure for a full-fledged horizontal e-commerce offering - internally called the New Commerce - to simultaneously launch pan-India by October-November.
US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners will invest an additional Rs 1,875 crore in the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the Indian firm said in a statement on Wednesday.
Policy constraints may prevent many of the global retail giants from reaching their full potential.There are too many restrictions right now in the sector and policy makers lack clarity.
Mukesh Ambani's Reliance group has struck acquisition deals worth $4.2 billion with a dozen companies in just two years to expand its retail business. The latest purchase was of a majority stake in Justdial for Rs 3,497 crore. Elaborating on his acquisition strategy a few weeks ago during the AGM, Ambani stated that one of the key planks would be to acquire businesses that enhanced Reliance's offerings and experiences to customers and that they would be both physical and digital.
The retailer has registered a new company called 'Wal-Mart India Private Ltd' in the country, according to the data available with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
This makes it the most valued fintech company in the country after Paytm and Walmart-owned PhonePe.
The boom in organised retail will set the tone for major economic overhaul. The ripple effect will be improved supply chains, volume output, integration into global commerce, and higher tax collection, notes T N Ninan.
Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co will invest Rs 6,247.5 crore to buy a 1.4 per cent stake in Reliance Industries Ltd's retail arm -- the billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led firm's third such deal in less than two days.
This is the second investment by General Atlantic in a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, following a Rs 6,598.38 crore investment in Jio Platforms announced earlier this year.
Many industry executives have said the draft e-commerce policy is being perceived as nationalistic but not overly protectionist and it is providing preference to Indian players against foreign companies. This might have an impact on investment by large players such as Walmart and Amazon in the country, said the executives. They said e-commerce was a very small portion of the retail industry and at a nascent stage and did not require heavy hammer regulations. Though the policy talks about being equally applicable to foreign and domestic players, it mentions that foreign direct investment (FDI) takes precedence over the e-commerce policy in any area of overlap.
Three business houses are likely to be in the final race to strike a deal with Germany's Metro AG for investing in its India unit -- Metro Cash & Carry. Industry sources in the know named Reliance, Adani Group, and Thailand's conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) as potential frontrunners to acquire a partial or full stake in the Gurugram-headquartered Metro Cash & Carry, which has 31 stores and 5,000 direct employees. Around 20 companies, including strategic and private equity investors, were approached by the German chain, inviting them to bid for the Indian wholesale business, according to a source aware of the M&A developments.
Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, run by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, on Tuesday raised Rs 5,512.50 crore from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), taking the total fundraise to Rs 37,710 crore in less than four weeks.
Four new retailers from US, two from Germany may have shown interest in setting up shop in India.
Reliance Retail and Bharti Enterprises are understood to be in talks to buy India assets of the world's second largest retailer Carrefour that has decided to exit the country by closing its five stores.
Physical format stores are here to stay.
Ramping up e-commerce operations and going beyond its current strongholds are key challenges for the grocery chain in its battle with Mukesh Ambani's retail behemoth.
While Reliance has the clout to negotiate prices with suppliers for its e-commerce, not to forget the cost advantage of integrated warehouse and supply chains, Amazon and Walmart are no pushovers, they too have deep pockets.
Reliance, Bharti's response to Ahmedabad's space crunch.
The groups plan to take on well-entrenched players like Amazon, Flipkart, and Paytm by merging their offline businesses with e-commerce initiatives.
With an epic battle of billionaires for supremacy in one of the world's most prolific markets and a pandemic-propelled surge in online shopping in the background, India's nearly trillion-dollar retail market is hoping to touch 85 per cent of the pre-COVID business in the first half of the New Year. In a year when the COVID-19 carnage ripped apart the retail business, circa 2020 will best go down for the unravelling of the war between Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest man, and richest Indian Mukesh Ambani for pre-eminence in the booming market that is estimated to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025. It all started with Ambani's Reliance Industries agreeing in August to buy assets of the nation's second-largest retailer for Rs 24,713 crore, just a year after Bezos' Amazon purchased an indirect stake in the indebted Future Retail.
Retail giant Walmart and Bharti have decided to part ways.
'For all of us at Amazon, it is 'Bharat first'.' 'We are keeping the Indian customer at the centre of what we are doing.'
The company wants to compete against international majors in Sunil Mittal bastion.
