Wal-Mart’s Duke gets a feel of Indian retail formats

EVEN AS its role in the joint venture with Indian telecom giant Bharti remains still unclear, a team of executives from US retail giant Wal Mart visited some stores in the commercial capital of Mumbai to get a sense of how the operations of various emerging retail formats are run in India. The team led by Wal Mart vice chairman Michael Duke also included Bharti Enterprises joint managing director Rajan Mittal. The group has visited malls as well as large format retail stores across the city including Inorbit, Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar of the Future Group. Hypercity CEO Andrew Livermore said, “It was a totally unexpected one and I went across and said ‘hello’ to him. Top retailers that ET spoke to were surprised at the hype surrounding the visit of the Wal Mart officials. “I am surprised by the hype created by the visit of the officials. Wal-Mart may be one of the largest retailers in the world but it is certainly not the best,” the CEO of a retail chain said. When contacted, Food Bazaar president Damodar Mall said: “I am unaware of his visit to our stores.” Industry sources however, said that it was a routine market visit to understand the peculiarities of the Indian market and also to understand the co-existence of traditional kirana stores and modern retail formats within the same vicinity. The joint venture of Bharti with Wal Mart had come under a cloud after Sonia Gandhi had shot a letter to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take decisions on the opening up of foreign direct retail (FDI) in retail only after looking at the interest of smaller retailers who exist in the country. The local associations in Maharashtra led by the Federation of Associations of Maharashtra, an umbrella of all retailers in the state along with co-operative stores including Apna Bazaar, hawkers and trade unions are coming together to oppose the entry of Wal Mart and Indian major Reliance into the retail sector. The group feels that the government should study the social impact of multinationals and corporate giants’ entry into the retail sector.

courtesy:economictimes

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