Walmart in partnership talks with Tata Group to expand retail presence

New Delhi: Walmart, world’s biggest retailer, is reportedly in talks with Tata Group for a partnership to expand its retail presence in the world’s sixth-biggest market. The US-based retailer aims to leverage the network of Tata Group to expand its reach to kirana stores while allowing Flipkart to enhance its presence in the food and grocery segment.

The move from Walmart comes amid reports of its rival Amazon exploring partnership opportunities with Reliance Retail, the country’s biggest brick-and-mortar retailer.

“This partnership will aim to expand reach to kiranas, upgrade them, and then utilise the kirana network for fulfilment of food and grocery orders for Flipkart. It’s almost the same as what Reliance Industries intends to do and at a similar scale. This is an asset-light model and Walmart will thereby have an indirect presence in retail in a peaceful way without making any capital investment,” a leading business daily quoted a company executive as saying.

Walmart wants to have an Indian partner who is “respected” and “has a voice in policymaking”, the executives said.

According to the report, Tata Group and Tata Sons CFO Saurabh Agrawal is leading the negotiations and a team comprising senior group executives is learnt to have visited the US to hold talks with Walmart’s global top management. But the final details of the partnership are yet to be finalised.

A Tata Group director told the daily that Tata Sons holds multiple discussions and meetings, but not all are converted into deals. Such proposed partnerships take months of ironing-out, he added.

Worth mentioning here is that Walmart currently runs 26 wholesale cash-and-carry stores in India that are branded as ‘Best Price Modern Wholesale’ apart from its stake in Flipkart. Tata currently has an equal joint venture with UK’s Tesco Plc to run supermarkets and hypermarkets under the banner of Star Hyper, Star Market, Star Daily and Star Extra. The 43 stores are spread across Mumbai, Pune, Kolhapur, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, according to the company’s website.

In India, 100% foreign direct investment is allowed in single-brand retail, food retail and ecommerce marketplaces, while 51% is allowed in multi-brand retail.

An executive said Walmart is not keen on setting up food and grocery supermarkets and hypermarkets in India right now, and plans to focus on Flipkart — in which it has made a huge investment — for expanding its consumer-facing business in the country.
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