Bharti Retail Works to Consolidate Stores in North India

Bharti Retail aims to consolidate presence in northern India [Economic Times]

Bharti Retail, a recent entrant in the organised retail market, on Tuesday said before launching pan-India operations, it will focus on Punjab and then move on to consolidate its position in northern India.

“Our focus right now is Punjab and we will first consolidate our presence in North India,” Bharti Retail President and CEO Vinod Sawhney told reporters on the sidelines of a CII organised retail conference.

The company has recently announced the launched of its first three food and grocery stores under the brand name ‘Easy Days’ in Ludhiana, Punjab.

Easy Day is a neighbourhood format store, which has been launched first. The company also plans to have bigger formats like compact medium and hypermarkets.

Asked when the other formats were expected to be rolled out, Sawhney said, the company was at present learning from the experiences of the new stores and was thus concentrating on smaller formats.

Easy Day stores offer a wide range of products ranging from items for daily usage such as personal care products to groceries such as processed foods, staples, bakery, dairy products, meat and poultry.

Sawhney said the company would also focus on private labels at the stores. “As somebody who is entering the retail market we will be looking at private labels also,” he said.

The company, which has a JV with Wal-Mart for cash-and- carry operations and a franchisee agreement for front-end retail, aims to spend USD 2.5 billion by 2015 for opening multiple format stores.

The company is expected to open its first cash-and-carry stores by the end of 2008.

Posted by Vasudha Desikan on Thursday, May 15, 2008