Bharti to open first retail store early next year: Mittal

Bharti Enterprises will kick off its retail venture early next year, opening half-a-dozen stores, branding of which is still being worked out with its back-end partner Wal-Mart. “The process is going on as per the plan and we are looking at a cluster of stores by early 2008… you will see half-a-dozen coming up,” Bharti Group chairman and CEO Sunil Bharti Mittal, who led a recent Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) delegation to the US in his capacity as CII president, told reporters here today.

Mittal had met Wal-Mart vice-chairman Mike Duke in Washington during the visit. The two partners have started recruitments and were busy sorting out legal issues. “The legal issues like brand agreement, franchise arrangement may take some time… but we are going ahead as per the plan,” said Mittal, who had last year announced an investment of $2.5 billion in his retail venture. While Bharti would manage the front-end, Wal-Mart would provide back-end and logistics support.

Mittal added that outsourcing of jobs to India is likely to become an issue in the coming US presidential elections, despite efforts by Indian industry to show that a reverse wind has started blowing. “Outsourcing may become an election issue although we have impressed upon US political leaders like Hillary Clinton not to make it an India debate,” Mittal said. At a meeting with senator and Democratic Party presidential candidature aspirant Clinton, the CII team tried to drive home how US companies were benefitting from outsourcing critical services. They informed the American leaders about the trend of reverse outsourcing, where globalising Indian firms were giving services contracts to US companies. “We brought to her notice a billion dollar service contract to IBM by our own group Bharti… in fact Clinton asked me for details of this contract because IBM is located in her constituency,” Mittal said.