Carrefour returns to India to open 50 food stores in Delhi-NCR within 5 years

New Delhi: French retailer Carrefour will open 50 food and grocery stores in the Delhi-NCR, the first step of its expansion in five years, marking the French retailer’s re-entry into India’s fresh and packaged food market.

“We decided to start from the National Capital Region of Delhi and focus on three formats – supermarkets, small hypermarkets and gourmet stores. I would say this is the secret of our future success; smaller formats, more formats, product Differentiation and of course, we will start in Delhi and then expand to other parts of India,” Carrefour executive director of international partnerships Patrick Lasfargues said in an interview. Mint Tuesday.

In addition to cold cuts, Carrefour will open stores selling fresh produce as well as packaged foods such as staple foods and vegetables.

Last month, Carrefour, which operates hypermarkets and grocery stores in several countries, announced its return to India through a franchise partnership with Dubai Apparel Group.

The company first entered India in 2010 through a wholesale cash-and-carry model, which had looser foreign direct investment (FDI) rules and allowed overseas companies to invest directly in India’s retail market. This is different from FDI in multi-brand retail, where foreign retailers are expected to partner with local companies.

Carrefour closed five floors here and exited the market in July 2014, citing a lack of business and an inability to find partners to expand its multi-brand retail business.

Plans to re-enter India

The plan to re-enter India’s $600 billion food and grocery market is part of Carrefour’s 2026 international partnership development plan, which focuses on the retailer’s strategy to expand into more than 10 new countries by 2026.

“In this strategy, we decided to look at India very carefully because of its population, its GDP per capita, the growth of the country, the emergence of shopping malls and more e-commerce than before. It is a very strong position now. India,” he said.

The investment to open the stores will be made by the clothing group. Nilesh Ved, owner of Apparel Group and chairman of AppCorp Holding, declined to disclose investment figures.

Globally, while Carrefour does sell some general merchandise and other non-food items such as small appliances and personal care products in its stores, in India the focus will be mainly on food, with a “small portion” of non-food items. food.

“Non-food will be quite limited in this market because of the size of the stores. In fact, most of it will be food, certainly made in India. A very small part of it may be imported food. We have an option; Consider local production of some Carrefour own brands in the market,” he said.

The stores will consist of mini-marts of approximately 8,000 square feet and compact hypermarkets of 25,000 to 30,000 square feet.

The first store will open in the second half of next year; it plans to open 50 stores in the National Capital Region of Delhi in the next five years.

“We will open in 2025 and the first target is to open about five stores. So, India is definitely on Carrefour’s roadmap,” he said.

Ved, whose company operates stores in India under the brands Charles & Keith, Tim Hortons, Aldo, Dune London, Nine West and Steve Madden, said there are few organized players in the Indian food retail market.

Reliance operates food stores under its Reliance Fresh brand. Spencer’s, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, operates multi-brand stores selling food, personal care, fashion, home essentials, electrical and electronic products. Online retailer Amazon holds a stake in offline food and grocery retailer More, which operates more than 800 supermarkets in addition to hypermarkets in India.

True, Carrefour operates 14,930 stores in 40 countries around the world. Of these, 8,865 are directly operated franchise stores in eight countries (5,336 in France) and 2,543 are managed by international partners, meaning a total of 11,408 stores are operated by third parties.

Rasfagues said it was “not a challenge” that restrictions in India’s multi-brand retail policy do not allow brands such as Carrefour to operate directly in the country. “We will not invest in any other country outside of our eight core countries,” he said.