MUMBAI: The billion dollar American retail giant, Wal-Mart opened its first store in India in partnership with Bharti under the cash & carry format. The store situated in Amritsar was inaugurated on Saturday.
The launch had been was postponed due to a law and order problem in Punjab following violence sparked by the killing of a local religious leader in Austria.
The Bharti-Wal-Mart JV firm plans to invest $6-7million per store, and is planning to open 15 stores in the next 4 years with a total investment of $100 million.
Bharti Wal-Mart, the 50:50 joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and US-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc, had last year announced that its wholesale stores would be opened under the brand name of 'Best Price Modern Wholesale,' and each store would be 50,000-1,00,000 square feet in size.
The stores will offer a range of 6,000 to 10,000 products, under both food and non-food categories and are expected to provide employment to 5,000-odd persons across the country.
Competitive pricing would be the USP of the store. The JV firm claims that its customers can save about 3-10% on their purchase.
Rajan Mittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti said, We would consider a JV with Wal-Mart for multi-brand retailing if the Indian govt were to allow FDI... The current rules don't allow multiple-brand retailers to sell directly to consumers, but they can run wholesale operations and provide back-end support to Indian retailers...
Factiods
Investment is 30% higher than Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Retail
The company already has a store in Ludhiana, Punjab.
First store was opened in Ludhiana in April, 2008
Store is called Easy Day and is a small format store stocking grocery and FMCG
Each store has an area of about 1200-2500 sq.ft
Best Price Modern Wholesale likely to be similar
Logo and store colours would a combination of blue and green