National Mart opens its largest store

Move over Walmart, Tesco and ASDA.

India’s very own large format retail stores are growing in size as well as reach. The latest to join is Hyderabad based National Mart, a hypermarket format that allows customers to choose from a wide range of products.

The company has recently opened a 40,000 sq ft store at Medchal in the state of Telangana.

Yash Agarwal, Founder, National Mart and Executive Director, Ratnadeep Retail Pvt. Ltd. shared on his LinkedIn post, “At National Mart, we are dedicated to providing you with 365 days of discounts on groceries and a wide range of products.

We introduced StyleMart, which brings you the latest family fashionable range at affordable prices.
Our goal is to be your one-stop shop for groceries and fashion under one roof”.

The store offers products across various categories including food and grocery, fresh fruits and vegetables, general merchandise and its latest addition being fashion apparel and accessories for the entire family.

Medchal is located in the outer fringes of the capital city of Hyderabad and is among the fastest growing suburbs.

National and regional players like Spencers, Reliance Retail, Heritage, etc. compete in this fiercely competitive landscape.

International giants such as Wal-Mart which entered India over a decade ago in an alliance with the Bharti (AirTel) group discontinued operations of its large format retail stores while the likes of Carrefour and Metro AG have exited the Indian retail ecosystem completely.

SPAR, one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world continues to struggle with its operations. The brand had established large stores spanning over 25,000 sq ft in over a dozen malls across South India.

The buying behaviour of shoppers for daily use products changed drastically after Covid-19 and the likes of SPAR had to bear the brunt due to the change in nature of shopping.

Big Box retail (hypermarkets) is a tough business to operate, especially with the range of SKUs a store has to carry.

While Supermarkets restrict between 10,000 – 12,000 SKUS, a large format store which is over 20,000 – 30,000 sq ft needs to carry atleast 40,000 SKUs to ensure a wide range of products is available on offer for consumers to choose from.

Rent for the premises, staff salary and welfare, running costs such as electricity and logistics, interest cost on unsold inventory and working capital are among the key challenges that is faced regularly by large format retailers.