News , Views and More

Per HT , verdict is already out on who will lead the race for Retail in India . Reliance & Walmart-Bharti will be leading the pack followed by Birla’s and Tata’ s . Surprisingly there are sympathetic words for Pantaloon as it doesn’t have the deep pockets required.
Not surprisingly neighborhood retailers were told not to ask there kids to continue in this as future looks bleak for them.
These are interesting observations but Pantaloon group being first in the market and being a pure play retail player definitely looks to be for big run (my 2 cents ) . As stated by Kishore Biyani that Retail war will be fought in media in 2007 and on ground in 2008 let’s wait for time.

Walmart Bharti is coming up with there first HyperMarket in Hyderabad , they are scouting for land in the outskirts , date of starting the Hypermarket is not clear.

With Reliance retail also coming up with hypermarket in Hyderabad , place will become the battleground for the titans with customer becoming the king … if they somehow survive the roads leading to the place.

What is HyperMarket ?
Hypermarket is a superstore which combines a supermarket and a department store. The result is a gigantic retail facility which carries an enormous range of products under one roof, including full lines of groceries and general merchandise.

What is SuperMarket ?
Supermarket is a departmentalized self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise. It is larger in size and has a wider selection than a traditional grocery store.

Per Business Standard Tata’s are in talk with Tesco for there retail plan , Tesco was earlier in talk with Bharti before Bharti moved on with Wal Mart.
Looks like Indian business houses will soon run out of partners if the trend continue.

Per ET AV Birla group has fast forwarded to retail bandwagon by buying out Trinethra Super Retail, including its fast-growing online shopping outfit, Fabmall. With annual revenue of 250 Crore . Trinethra primaily focus has been on grocery , fresh fruits , vegetables and dry products where AV Birla group is going to focus . AV birla group would pump 5000-6000 crore at least in the initial phase in it’s retail venture .

With India Retail market set to explode and is already pegged at 300 Billion $ , it will be interesting to see which IT companies will gain the most , worldwide retails companies allocate 7% of budget on IT so the opportunity for IT players will definitely run into billions (still looking on the actual numbers) .
My guess is companies like Oracle , SAP which has products in the area of SCM will gain along with companies like IBM , Infosys , Wipro , TCS , Satyam with there competencies in implementing these packages.
Bharti has already shown the way by outsourcing there telecom backoffice work to IBM that it pays to do so , lets see if they take the same path in there retail ventures.

Here is insight into the bharti plans for retail , points which can be taken are :
1. Plan to invest 7 B$ by 2010.
2. Expects a topline of 1-2 B$ by 2010.
3. Will have small retailers as there franchisee.

Looks like Reliance has started making first effect on our neighborhood kirana-walla as per ANI
Local vegetable vendors are loosing out to Reliance retail in the fight to sell there vegetables , which was expected as they didn’t had the required economy of scale to bring the prices down neither they had billion dollars behind them to support there cart.
WalMart is severely opposed for same reasons in USA , which is captured in this documentary.

Looks like Railways are also foraying into retailing with through public-private equity way by making available access land they have to private parties . This will definitely be a win-win situation for them and retailers.

Lalu is definitely taking railways to places.

As per the story in financial express , Indian retail is definitely poised for good returns from long term perspective and major player will be Reliance , Walmart - Bharti ,Pantaloon and Provogue .

Major concern for the retail will be growing real estate prices which almost doubled in last 2 years.