Retail News Update

Wadhawan Food Retail Pvt. Ltd (WFRPL) will invest Rs1,500 crore in its food and grocery retail venture “Spinach” over four years, to open 1,500 stores in 90 cities.
Currently, the group has 23 Spinach stores in Mumbai and Thane and there are plans to increase the number to 100 in Maharashtra itself by the end of current fiscal, said Wadhwan Group director Kapil Wadhwan said.
“Our plans of expansion are on track and we expect to invest Rs1,500 crore to touch 1,500-odd convenios in 90 cities in the next four years.”
Spinach, positioned as a local community store for daily home needs, recently completed its first anniversary. It also launched a customer magazine called My Spinach.
The stores have three different formats called the Spinach Super, Spinach Local and Spinach Express.
To offer a value-addition to customers looking at the rising competition, WFRPL in April acquired Sangam—a non-store home delivery retail business—from Unilever India Export Ltd. “With Sangam we have strengthened our back-end operations and are providing facilities to customer through the offline model,” Wadhwan said.
However, he denied that home delivery will be the key strategy going forward. “Like an ATM machine, it is an additional facility offered to customers despite having bank branches. Likewise, the stores too will remain,” he said.
On a possible foreign tie-up, Wadhwan said the group has decided to go solo in its venture as it has the required expertise to expand in the booming retail market.