Tesco to up sourcing from India by 66%

UK-based 37-billion pound retailer, Tesco, plans to increase its sourcing from India by around 66 per cent this year.

The company intends to source products worth 100 million pounds from India this year as compared to 60 million pounds last year. While so far Tesco has been sourcing only garments from India, this year it is eyeing other product segments like household utensils and garden instruments as well.

Speaking to mediapersons, Meena Ganesh, chief executive officer of Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (HSC), said, "In this financial year, Tesco is looking at sourcing household utensils and garden instruments from India, apart from garments. Ahmedabad, therefore, is on Tesco's radar as a potential base for suppliers this year. A majority of its suppliers at present are from Bangalore, Tirupur and Delhi."

HSC is the global services arm of Tesco, which has an employee strength of 3,70,000. It focuses on IT and business services and employs around 1,200 people. It is the central hub for the development and implementation of 'Tesco in a Box', which is typically an integration of a set of enterprise applications.

"We have deployed it in Turkey and will be rolling it out in China and Japan this year. We are also closely working with the US counterparts as Tesco plans to start trading in the US by the middle of next year," Ganesh said.

Tesco HSC has been working on various applications that help in space management, continuous replenishment, queue management and so on. It is also working on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.

The company is setting up its third building in Bangalore that will be operational in the next few months. Tesco HSC plans to increase its headcount to 2,000 by the end of this year. Tesco has invested "upwards of 25 million pounds" in India so far.