With Wal-Mart finally setting foot in India in collaboration with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises, German retail chain Metro Cash & Carry has put its India plans on the fast track.
The company plans to invest close to Rs 1,800-2,000 crore in the next three years to build a pan India network for its cash and carry business.
It is targeting 15-18 stores during the period in all major cities across the country, including two to three in Calcutta.
The first city store, on the EM Bypass, is expected to be ready by May-June next year, said James Scott, regional operating officer, Metro Cash & Carry International.
The company now has two stores in Bangalore and one in Hyderabad. The store in Mumbai is under construction.
In 2007, it will open three stores. Five to eight more stores will come up in 2008 and 2009. Each store entails an investment of 20 million euros.
Metro, which has a 28-billion-euro cash and carry business, is one of the first foreign retailers to enter India.
With the government’s restriction on foreign direct investment in front-end retail, Metro has restricted itself to wholesale.
Apart from fresh agricultural produce and food, it also supplies various items to shops, hotels, restaurants and even retailers.
The company has joined hands with local entrepreneur Mahendra K. Jalan’s Keventer to outsource supply chain infrastructure.
Metro will provide technology for grading, sorting, ripening and packaging agri products to Keventer.
However, the German firm is not looking at a Wal-Mart-Bharti structure to enter business to consumer (B2C) retail.
“We are not tying up with any Indian company,” Scott added.
Metro Cash & Carry CEO Thomas M. Huebner was in Calcutta recently.
“To sustain the 10 per cent growth rate, trade and distribution is also important. We need to invest in supply chain infrastructure, especially in agriculture. However, it is often a neglected issue here,” Huebner said
Source : The Telegraph
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