WalMart in India, its official!

There have been rumours, there have been tiny little scout offices, and there have been market surveys, but today WalMart, the biggest retailer of them announced that it is ready for the Indian market.

WalMart will provide logistic and supply chain support to Bharati Enterprise ltd, its prospective partner in India. That means, over the next 8 years we should be seeing a whole new brand of retail shopping "departmental stores"/malls being introduced in India. If WalMart and Bharati work as aggressively as they did here in the US, we should be seeing slashed prices all the way through computers to scooters, specials galore and stiff competition to other nonexistent chains.

Or we could just see a lot of takeovers, of the independent retailing chains/shops. It would be safe to believe that Shoppers stop will survive.

The venture is Bharati's own, with walmart only providing logistic support.

WIll this mean death to the Indian ma and pa retail shops (Marwaris, variety shops, Tulshi baug style shops and what have you?) I think no, because

• Infrastructure in India favours the small and the nimble, not the large and the trying to be fast,
• People are lazy, most dont own cars, and would not be bothered to travel all the way to Walmart for month's groceries, unlike the business model here in US.
• The ma and pa stores have excellent relationship with customers, including home delivery and monthly credit systems.

So the smallies are safe for now, but the biggies, aka shoppers stop and the likes are going to face stiff competition. Although, it all depends on how fast Bharati moves!