Within two months after Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail opened its cash and carry store in Gujarat, Kishore Biyani’s Future Group on Monday announced its foray into rural wholesale business with opening its first ‘Aadhaar Wholesale’ store in the state.
Both Future and Reliance plans to tap local traders and small businesses through their wholesale ventures.
The Rs 12,000-crore group plans to open 65 stores across the country and expecting a business of Rs 4,000 crore through this venture, the group said on Monday. The group has set up its first store at Kalol in Gujarat through Aadhaar Retailing Ltd, a unit of its venture arm Future Ventures, and plans to set up another store in Punjab.
"Aadhaar Wholesale is our first step towards the rural distribution model, offering small general traders everything they need to run their business under one roof and enabling them to participate in modern distribution infrastructure to grow their business,” Future Group chief executive officer Kishore Biyani said in a statement.
Apart from catering to the general trade, each Aadhaar Wholesale store will also be a single point sourcing hub for the ‘Aadhaar Retail’ franchisees in the rural area.
Over 400-500 Aadhaar Retail franchisees will be attached to a single Aadhaar Wholesale stores for fulfilment of its merchandise mix, the release said.
Aadhaar Wholesale will sell 1,500 products including processed food, personal and home care and general merchandise items and kitchen appliances. Reliance Retail sells 21,000 products in its wholesale store.
At present, the Future group runs 60 Aadhaar retail stores in rural areas in partnership with the Godrej group.
The size of the rural consumer goods market is estimated to reach Rs 16,70,100 crore by 2015, according to estimates by consulting firm McKinsey.
