Retail India Business - News, Views and Much More

Reliance Pharma

After Reliances aggresive Retail Foray, it is all set to foray into the global Pharma space with Reliance Life Sciences.

Reliance Retail - Reliance Fresh - hits the shelves

  Reliance Industries Limited has opened its first store at Hyderabad. Tagged as Reliance Fresh it specializes in Diary and Grocery, ideally your neighbourhood store. Reliance has and plans to launch many more in-house brands to retail its own produce rather than too much of branded products. Right now its private label for grocery is Reliance Select and will be shortly launching its Fresh Plus a bigger version of Reliance Fresh which is to cater to food and grocery, pharmacy and apparel.

The first store of Reliance Fresh is about 2000 sq.ft and it expects to roll out its hypermarkets in sizes of around 75000 sq.ft by end of the year.

Image Source: CNN IBN

Carrefour To Enter India?

French Retail major Carrefour is said to be entering India in a Joint Venture with Dubai based Landmark Group which already has a presense in India with its Lifestyle and Home Centre stores.

Is Anil Ambani Entering Retail India Now?

Its always good to know there is the much needed frenzy activity in Retailing in India. The last one hears is R-ADAG, the Anil Ambani controlled Reliance company is toying up with entering the retail sector. But its still divided if there is an outright entry into retail stores and stuff or through an informal route of the investment mode. The groups controlled by Anil Ambani may invest into one of the leading established retail houses and the name to popup is Pantaloons. Not surprising at all one must say.

Source: DNA

Walmart Exits Germany

Earlier during the week, Wal-Mart made a rather surprising announcement that it is exiting Germany and Metro would be taking over its German Operations.

Metro Group already with a leading share, will gain a much stronger foothold now in Germany after taking over WalMarts Supercentres in Germany. Metro only recently acquired Casions Geant Hypermarket chain in Poland. Wal-Mart on the other hand had just recently exited South Korea and now Germany.

Wal-Mart did say its rather going to focus on new and high growth markets. With this exit, Wal-Mart's international operations is expected to take a backseat.

Despite all the exits, Wal-Mart has just got the Indian Governments approval to open its office here. Retailing in India is still a barrier to overcome for international chains.

Indian government Bans Blogs

Its rather sad that the Indian Government has blocked access to a few websites and many blogs like Typepad. Although the government has apprensions about the current affairs after the recent Mumbai Blasts, its rather strange that they have decided to block every website instead of filtering out the ones they had a problem with.

And I thought the government was taking steps with Freedom of Speech, Right To Information, etc

So much for liberalization.

You might only be able to recieve this email update and for sometime the retail india blog may be blocked with a million others if you are accessing within India. Till then.....

Reliance Retail

Reliance Retail has no plans to Franchise its operations for the moment and all the stores opening up in the initial phase will be company owned, as expected. Adding this note to all those writing in seeking on how to get a Reliance Franchisee.

Franchise India

Since I am recieving a lot of emails lately on how one could go about opening a business, I'm posting this link to FranchiseIndia.com which is one India's leading Franchise Facilitation companies having a credible list of Franchisors. Site can be accesed by clicking here www.franchiseindia.com

Well not endorsing them or marketing them, but just assisting the dozens searching for some clues :)

Mothercare India Expansion

Mothercare, UK, plans to have 10 stores by the end of the year. Mothercare has already successfully launched its stores across Bangalore, Hydrabad, Pune and two at Mumbai.

Next to Set Shop

Planet Retail is to be partnering with Next, UK, and should be opening up early in 2007. Planet Retail has already brought in brands like Marks and Spencers.