Finally Tesco comes to India, partners with Tata Trent
byline("August 12, 2008");
Written by Amit Agarwal on August 12, 2008 Text Size
UK’s biggest retailer has finally chosen its partner for Indian operations, to complement its strategy of growing overseas following its operations in countries like US, Korea and China. Tesco has chosen Tata Group’s retail arm, Trent Ltd to start its Indian operations.
Tesco will open 3 cash and carry stores in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore in a 50:50 JV with Trent and also assist Trent in increasing its retail presence of its hypermarkets ‘Star Bazaar’ from current 4 stores to 50 stores in next 5 years.
Tesco cash and carry stores will supply merchandise to Star Bazaar and receive a fee for using it’s retail expertise. In the front-end venture, it is very likely that like Bharti-Wal-Mart deal, the name Tesco would not feature in the stores.
For Tesco, this could have been the best possible scenario as it has got a trusted brand TATA to partner with and also leverage on its low-cost efficient model to expand its Indian business. Its wholesale business would be well complemented by the front end operations of Trent.
The deal would give a much needed fillup to Trent’s retail operations, as it has been expanding very slowly as compared to peers like Future Group, Reliance Retail and Aditya Birla ‘More’. By choosing Tesco, Star Bazaar could improve its product mix by offering a well defined value proposition.
Tata Group would also be aided by the experience of its other UK deals like Tata Steel-Corus and Tata Motors - Jaguar and Landrover deal.
Source: http://www.labnol.org/india/corporate/finally-tesco-comes-to-india-partners-with-tata-trent/4222/
regards
JESSICA TANEJA