Tag: walmart india

Walmart India to invest $500 million to open 47 more stores

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Walmart India on Wednesday said it would invest about $500 million(about Rs 3,200 crore at the current exchange rate)to open another 47 stores by 2022 to take the total number of outlets to 70.

Krish Iyer, President and CEO Walmart India, said that out of the 23 B2B Cash and Carry stores, 19 have achieved break even with over a million members.

The global retail giant, which opened its 23rd wholesale store in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, is in the process of setting up a second store in Visakhapatnam and discussions are underway for land.

“A typical store needs anywhere between $9 to $10 million in terms of investment.

We are planning to take the total number of stores to 70 by 2022. That is the plan and we will also have e-commerce space in all the stores.

So you can do the math. Yes, it needs $500 million,” Iyer told PTI.

Walmart India became a wholly owned subsidiary of Walmart Inc after it severed and exited from the failed Joint Venture with Bharti Enterprises in 2014.

Iyer said the company also has plans to increase fulfilment centres across the country.

Speaking about the Vizag store, he said it had come up on 56,000 square feet and provided employment to 2,000 people directly and indirectly.

“This is now the fourth store in Andhra Pradesh. This is the first store that we have opened in AP after Walmart India became a 100 percent subsidiary.

We have a plan to open another store in Visakhapatnam. We are looking for a site. We hope to sign the property in the next three to four months. It takes about three hours to open a store after we sign a property,”he said.

Iyer said the current contribution of private labels to overall sales was in single digits and he expected it to grow to about 20 percent in the next two to three years.

On the possible cannibalisation of sales by its recently acquired Flipkart, he said both are in different segments.

While Flipkart focuses on individual customers, Walmart provides B2B service, he said.

“Walmart India’s Best Price e-commerce is about B2B.

Flipkart is the marketplace and has a lot of sellers who will sell to end consumers.

In our e-commerce we don’t sell to end consumers and and our customers will sell to other business members.So there is a difference.

There wont be any cannibalisation of sales because our members are very loyal to us.

We have one million members with ours,he explained.

Walmart’s Best Price Modern Wholesale Store stocks over 5,000 items ranging from fresh, frozen and chilled foods, fruits and vegetables, dry groceries, personal to home care items and electronic goods.

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Walmart India activates UPI on its B2B e-commerce platform

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Walmart India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Walmart Inc, today activated unified payments interface (UPI) for all its registered members.

This payment solution will enable members, especially kiranas/resellers, who shop online at Walmart India’s B2B e-commerce site www.bestprice.in, to make direct and secured payments online from their bank account without sharing bank details, the global retail giant said in a press release today.

“This will especially benefit kirana members who neither hold any credit/debit card nor have the time to visit banks for making RTGS payments. UPI is in addition to various other payment modes such as credit card, debit card, net banking and e-wallets that Walmart India offers to its members,” it said.

The company’s chief corporate affairs officer Rajneesh Kumar said, “This initiative reiterates our commitment to enable small businesses, especially kiranas, prosper. This payment solution will help our members spend more time with their customers and serve them better as they do not have to step out of their stores to visit banks for making payments.”

Kumar said that with the expectation that the UPI system will boost online transactions, the initiative will certainly complement efforts to make India a digital economy.

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Walmart India to open 50 best price stores in four years, says CEO Krish Iyer

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Walmart India, the local arm of Walmart, is looking at opening 50 best price stores over the next four to five years, said Krish Iyer, president and CEO of the company, adding that “India is a key growth market for Walmart”.

The company already owns and operates 21 best price stores in India.

Along with opening best price stores, it is planning to expand its footprint on the fulfillment centre front.

The wholly owned subsidiary of Walmart Inc has announced the launch of its second fulfillment centre in India, which is located in Lucknow. It will cater to the business needs of businesses like kirana stores, hotels as well as restaurants. Walmart’s first FC was opened in Mumbai in November 2017.

The combination of FC’s and best price stores will help Walmart reach a larger number of customers across the country. It already has a million active members and is seeing a healthy growth in numbers.

The company gets about 50 percent of its sales from stores and the remaining from e-commerce and business development agents. With increasing focus towards B2B e-commerce, Walmart expects to make deeper inroads into the market.

Walmart India is also exploring plans to build a cold chain infrastructure. The company is willing to partner with other companies to build this infrastructure.

Without disclosing investment figures, Iyer said that the focus is to clock a healthy topline growth. “We have a plan for the next 10 years in terms of the strategic direction … expect a good healthy double digit topline growth going forward,” he said.

If the company is able to maintain this scale of growth, Walmart should be able to achieve a billion dollars of revenue on India before 2025, said Iyer.

Even as the focus is on growing the cash and carry business, Walmart is also looking forward to getting approval from the CCI on the Flipkart deal.

Iyer expects all regulatory approvals to be granted in a timely manner. He, however, refused to share any details on the integration or synergy with Flipkart.

Iyer made it clear that Flipkart will continue to be run independently. Best practices from Walmart will be shared with Flipkart and that will result in a win-win situation for the two, said Iyer.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow