Finally made it....

The question was when and not will they enter India and was personally following the progress closely and the news was broken yesterday that Wal-Mart is going to pair up with Bharti to set up retail stores all across India. Though Wal-Mart is gonna be in the background taking care of the cost aspects of the supply chain, eventually they would take over the store front. Is Wal Mart's entry into India good for India's economy ? I want to post some of my opinions on this tie up....Wal-Mart's entry opens the gate for other foreign retail giants like Target, Home Depot to put their foot into India... All this means more employment for the Indian public, improvement in technology, better quality of living. There are some argument that we can see the same problems existing in the US with the small time vendors and retailers in India also with the entry of Wal-Mart. I feel otherwise, in India, Wal-Mart could face serious problems from the small time vendors. It would be interesting to see what kind of niche market Wal-Mart would be targeting in India, because the lower and the middle class the primary niche of Wal-Mart in the US does not possess cars or vehicles to go to the supermarket to make purchases, they prefer the local markets where they have the power of bargaining, prefer the comfort of the vendor delivering products to their houses but don't be suprised if Wal-Mart delivers groceries to individual households.Other challenges they could face are that the roads in India are not the best and this would definitely affect the lead time of the trucks reaching the stores on time, thus affecting their cost and hence the final price, (hope they would work to make the roads better) in the US most of their stores are in small towns but this techinique would backfire on them in India... It would be very interesting in the coming days to see how they perform and what kind of strategy they would hold in India...

What ever happens I feel this is a good thing for India and this would encourage the local giants like Pantaloon, Reliance to come up with innovative ideas to tackle this huge challenge..... The proof for this lies in the fact that Reliance announced plans to open stores all across India this year when Wal Mart was trying to get into India... Now that they are here we can expect more announcements and there lies a good future for the Supply Chain Industry in India. Lets hope for the best for India with this venture.....