Indian supermarket chains to expand

Retailers are scouting for areas in a number of cities because they plan to open 300 supermarkets and hypermarkets over the subsequent three years. Reliance Retail, too, is in search of properties for its Reliance Smart Point supermarket format. One of the reasons for this is that retailers are betting on India’s long-term potential for organised meals and grocery enterprise, an estimated market of greater than US$ 500 billion.

“Every supermarket operator is expanding, including Reliance, More, DMart…,” commented Shubranshu Pani, managing director of retail providers at consultancy agency JLL. “Sales are happening for fashion retailers since August and they had a good Diwali, but they are still not out of the woods,” she said.

A report by India Ratings & Research from the Fitch Group said that meals and grocery retailers noticed “meaningful recoveries” in October and November. It added that most retailers had over 90% of their shops operational heading into the quarter, against 70% initially of the September quarter.