Last year I had written about interesting Test match between 2 retail giants who had announced their plans to open hundreds of stores across India.
Bharti Wal-Mart had announced their wholesale cash-and-carry and back-end supply chain management operations in India. Close to their heels, Reliance Retail has announced their plan of entering the same business segment with plans of supplying to kirana stores and institutional buyers.
More than 12 months have gone by and we have a clear winner. Reliance Retail is now a 600-store chain, while Wal-Mart, which had planned to start operations by the year-end, does not have a single store. Infact, they have differed their plans to 2009.
Within 12 months of announcement, Reliance Retail has aggressively pursued real estate across India and have already garnered large footprint giving them a huge advantage in growing organized retail market.
Winning the high stakes match means getting a foothold in the $300 billion Indian market that is dominated by an estimated 12 million mom-and-pop shops, roadside vendors, and outdoor markets.
I doubt Bharti-Walmart will ever be able to challenge Reliance in retail business.
And it is not only in Retail, Reliance seems to be gaining huge advantage in its Telecommunication business as well with Reliance pursuing MTN bid after Bharti’s talk with them fizzled out.
Update: As Saurabh pointed out in the comments the MTN bid is done by Anil Ambani owned ADAG group. Also, would like to know any one knows if Bharti-Walmart store has opened up anywhere in India?
[…] us not forget that Wal-Mart is already in India in JV with Bharti in Cash and Carry business (wholesale). The present Joint Venture is into wholesale business […]
the winner will be the one who can outbleed the other by taking bigger losses in their bid to win markets. it is good time for customers who can expect to get some wonderful deals while the biggies are out their knifing each other!!!
dear ashutosh,sourabh and mr arun, i have worked in bharti walmart as team leader and for your information they have 8 stores as compact hyper 3 in punjab,3 in ncr,1 in indore and 1 AGARA by the names EASYDAY MARKET WHILE THEY HAVE STORE OF 1500 TO 2000 SQ FEETS IN NUMBER ABT 70 ALL OVER NORTHINDIA,WHILE AS PER THE CASH N CARRY BUSINESS THEY HAVE OPENIED 3 STORES NAMED AS BEST PRICE IN PUNJAB I.E IN AMRITSAR,CHANDIGARH,JULANDHAR..
SO I HOPE BHARTI IS A SMART PLAYER ITS NOT LIKE RELIANCE WHO ONE DAY OPEN A STORE ..WHILE NEXT DAY THEY CLOSED IT..
reliane will be winner all the way. Bhartiwalmart not well known in india. Reliance is a brand. And they know well indian market. They hired very professional manpower. It will create history as done earlier.
Thank you very much for sharing this interesting blog.Reliance does seem to be moving ahead Bharti ,but it seems its behind its own schedule.Thanks to Reliance for his excellent retail performance.Reliance itself is disadvantaged by the adventures in UP, Orissa, Kerala where there have been opposition from the small vendors and supported by the vote bank politicians eager to cater to their favors.
Actually the story itself is wrongly placed. Reliance had already begun their presence few years earlier than BWM. It was done in ancticipation of the competition. And as a result we saw the entry being delayed much over couple of years.
Moral, to grab the first movers advantage, you need to set the political climate right. Reliance itself is disadvantaged by the adventures in UP, Orissa, Kerala where there have been opposition from the small vendors and supported by the votebank politicians eager to cater to their favors.
However BWM’s entry was marred by the red-tapes and definition of the model of business it chose.
This is the reason why I feel that this article is misplaced and have no substance. BWM is a late starter, and if it causes a giant like Reliance cower by trying to capture the markets by having larger presence, it would seem carrying too much of weight and may lead to thinner margins and less effective results and bottom line. BWM has made a wise decision by making the competitors run and empty their coffers by positioning all across the country even places where there aren’t returns, simply for showing strength. Thus when BWM flexes its muscles it would be simply a matter of time when the empty giants would crumble by its own weight.
They are playing smarter and playing the waiting game. Play on boys, we are ready to watch the fun – now who said consumer is not the king??
i think in this reession period, Reliance has the opportunity to set up a good business and give tough competition to bharti wall mart …
as Reliance is already ahead of bwm for almost 600 stores across country
i think i already has proved its superiosity till date
being a mba student and
lookin retail industry i can say that first mover has a basic advantage.
Reliance have the pooortunity to improve itself from its past experience before bharti wall mart moves in.
Reliance got upper hand till date.
Why fighting on companies….Discuss some plus points of Reliance and Bharti’s Easy Day to let views know something that they don’t know.
Comments are welcome.
Enjoy ur Day!
Vikas KumRai
http://vikasretail.blogspot.com/
Why fighting on companies….Discuss some plus points of Reliance and Bharti’s Easy Day to let views know something that they don’t know.
Getting ahead in opening stores or acquiring expensive real estate is not the key to win a retail race. This basically shows how high the fixed operating costs of Reliance Retail are. Lets compare both based on what we have seen so far in RCOM (Now part of ADAG) and Airtel.
Airtel has the highest penetration and highest number of subsrcibers in India and still has the lowest operating costs in the world. They are the pioneers of outsourcing customer contact, billing etc in India, one of the few companies that have spent billions on their IT strategy. Result, corporate and metro customers use them. Therefore, billing is high and more profits. You can sell VAS to these customers as they have extra money. RCOM on the other hand sucks in customer service, billing and customer satisfcation. I am not saying that Airtel is perfect but they are better than rest.
Now look at Retail – Today, Reliance has refused to renew the contract of 1200 contract workers, does that tell you something? The strategy of Bharti Walmart seems to be profitable from the first store itself. Keep the costs low, be profitable, satisfy the customer and then move on to the next store. Don’t forget Bharti has learnt from its Telcommunications success and Walmart has the best practices in Retail and also global relationships. Whether, WalMart-Bharti can be restricted to just cash and carry for the long term also depends on political climate.
Walmart cannot be compared to any of the other retailer around the globe, to the fact they have opened more than 10 stores around Punjab and are coming up in quite a decent numbers in days to come.
Main thing is not to have more number of loss making stores rather having a decent number of Profit making ones and Walmart alongwith its Indian Partener Bharti are doing the same, they are moving slow because it is not the game of a day or two, rather its a long battle of a decade or so to really figure out the real winner.
So guys just wait and watch, no Verdict if final till they actually become competetors on Pan India Level.
Rgds
Banarsi
Hi,
First of all, Wal-Mart has opened two to three stores in Ludhiana – in a neighbourhood store format very recently. However, it has plans to expand by opening another 10-15 cash and carry stores across the continent in the next 2-3 years.
Secondly, I don’t think it is fair to say that Reliance is winning the war by just saying that they have a large footprint/real estate/number of stores. I think the important thing is 1) who gets a larger share of the market 2) who retains its customers and 3) who is able to provide the best quality product at the lowest price.
Even though for points 1 and 2, we cannot predict anything, we can assume with certainty that with Wal-Mart’s model of owning the value chain, not only will it garner local support by creating cold storage, logistics infrastructure – but will also do a very good job of it. It is this “feature” that will put Wal-mart ahead of Reliance in the race as they will be able to capitalize on their experience to deliver high quality and low prices.
For example, Reliance “Fresh” is not really fresh – that is believed by many people and is also a 1st hand experience. The “sabji waala” or the vegetable vendor with a cart has fresher veggies than they do. Also, because of lack of cold storage facilities, Reliance also probably incurrs losses because of spoilage – leave alone the loss of customer trust, which would build up over the years and be intensified by better products offered by Wal-mart.
I am trying to be as unbiased as possible here, but please forgive me if my support for the world’s largest retailer spills out here and there — nonetheless, facts are facts!!
Comments are welcome.
Regards,
Saahil Goel
Saurabh and Asutosh,
My bad…Yeah offcourse it is Anil Ambani’s Reliance Comm thats gone for MTN bid and Reliance Retail is under Mukesh’s umbrella. I’ll update the post to reflect that.
And honestly, I am not sure if Bharti-Walmart have opened up somewhere..I will try finding it..I doubt though
Hi,
Reliance does seem to be moving ahead Bharti ,but it seems its behind its own schedule. One of the business news channel had a story on how reliance has failed to achieve its own targets.
Secondly, Reliance retail and Reliance comm belong to two different groups. Retail is Mukesh Ambani group venture and Comm is Anil Ambani ( ADAG ) . We can’t actually put them together here.
Hi,
Reliance does seem to be moving ahead Bharti ,but it seems its behind its won schedule. One of the business news channel had a story on how relaince has failed to achieve its own targets.
Secondly just wanted to point out, Relaince retail and Relaince comm belong to two different groups. Retail is Mukesh Ambani group venture and Comm is Anil Ambani ( ADAG ) . We can’t actually put them together here.