IndiaRetailBiz

Doug McMillon, 42, CEO, Wal-Mart International, among the top ranking officials of the company, is on visit to India.

The world’s largest retailer and largest employer, which garners annual revenues of $404 billion and employee strength of 2.1 million persons worldwide, has set up a retail joint venture in India.

The Wal-mart’s  joint venture with Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Enterprises has already begun its operations in India. “Best Price Modern Wholesale” -the first ‘cash and carry’ (C&C) store of 50:50 jv– was unveiled at Amritsar in Punjab on the 30th May, 2009.

Wal-mart has been forced to begin its retail business with back-end cash and carry store as present policy guidelines do not allow foreign companies to invest (FDI) money in front-end, multi-brand stores in India.

Doug McMillon, who interestingly began his career with Wal-Mart as a truck loader, met several media organisations. Following are the main take-aways from his interviews with media persons in India.

• Wal-Mart continues to remain bullish on India. It is ready to accelerate investment plans in India depending on the number of projects, and the speed with which they can be set up by our company’s team in India. There is no dollar constraint for our business in India as it can draw as much funds as it wants out from around $5 billion set aside by the company for our international business.

• The Indian government want us to strengthen the supply and cold chains and work with small businesses. While, FDI in retail would be positive for this country, the government here alone knows what is best for the country. We are patient and are ready to wait for the sector to open for the foreign investment (FDI). It is not our timeline to determine.

• We are long-term thinkers. We like to start slowly and learn the business and make our mistakes and fix them and once it is time, the government, customers and society is ready, we can do things faster if that is the case. But if not, we will just continue to go along as we are and have a long-term view.

• The wholesale opportunity in India is big. I believe there is a role for us to play here serving kiranas and hotels and restaurants and other people and we’ll work on those things.

• We are trying to create the retail infrastructure as we serve the Bharti stores with cold chain, with a relationship with farmers, and others, so that we are ready to open stores directly, if and when the opportunity is available to us.

• Asia appears to be offering tremendous growth opportunity. I expect India and China to be at the top of the list. We would like to see China and India in particularly to be long-term drivers of growth and hopefully that’s the way things will play out.

• Post economic downturn, consumption of food and beverage has gone up, while it has gone down for apparel or car. As a consequence, we have hit a plateau in our sourcing from India.

• We have now begun to directly procure from farmers in India, whom we encourage to do new things. We also share their risks.
• We could face the challenge of economic downturn, because the way in which we manage our cost. Sam Walton (founder of the company) built Wal-Mart for a time like this, when consumers would benefit greatly.
• Wal-Mart creates elaborate training opportunities for its Associates (employees) to grow in the organisation fast. I began my career as a truck loader, while the current CEO of Sam’s club (cash & carry business) started as a cashier at Wal-Mart.