Organized Retail - The year that was

03 Jan '08

3 min read

2007 was a trail blazing year for the Indian retail Industry. The who's who of corporate India joined the retail bandwagon in the year gone by. Among them were the Bharti's of Airtel who tied up with the retailing giant Wal-Mart with revenues of more than US $ 350 billion, the Aditya Birla Group with many more in the Q who are willing to invest substantially to grab a piece of the Rs3,50,000 lakh retail cake.

The veterans of the industry like the Future Group have consolidated their positions by opening more stores and entering new verticals like home solutions as well as consumer durables. The future group has more than 25 retail formats, including JVs catering to a wide consumption space with more than 1000 stores across India.

The group will increase its footprint from present 7 million square feet to over 13 million sq. ft of retail space. This will mainly see the expansion of present flagship formats but will also include some new formats.

Reliance Retail, which faced stiff resistance from a few states, has put behind the same and is aggressively adding stores across the country and entering newer verticals like branded apparels, tying up with luxury brands across the globe along with venturing into the promising wholesale business.

Reliance has 9 formats across India which includes Reliance hyper markets, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Super, Reliance Mart, Reliance Digital, Reliance Trendz, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Wellness, Reliance Jewels and Reliance Timeout.

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