News: Metro on a 23-city drive

(DNA 02/10/2006) Hyderabad - Even as Bharti and Reliance mull and plan warehousing and sale of agricultural produce, the €57 billion cash-and-carry wholesale company Metro has carried out a study in 23 cities to expand the self-service wholesale chain in India. The group, which has committed an investment of €300 million in India, will kick off its Hyderabad operations in November with a 1 lakh sq ft warehouse on 7-acre land.

While it is also looking at a second centre in the city, Metro, which operates two centres in Bangalore, will launch operations in Kolkata in 2007 and Mumbai in middle of next year, a company official said.

It has identified properties in these cities. The company is also working on plans to launch in cities like Ahmedabad and Indore.

Metro, a B2B wholesaler, stocks and sells 18,000 products to retailers, and other customers like restaurants and hotels. Interestingly, while it has a registered customer base of 60,000 in Bangalore where it started off in 2003, the wholesaler has already notched 60,000 registrations in Hyderabad even before launching.

“We are expecting to touch a customer base of 80,000 before we launch operations in November,” the company official said.

The reason for this pre-launch success is attributed to the fact that Andhra Pradesh has amended the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees Act, enabling private companies to wholesale agricultural produce in the state unlike Karnatka where it is still the preserve of cooperatives and state-regulated bodies.

While the company can sell only food items like dairy and poultry produce in its Bangalore outlets, it will be able to sell fresh fruits and vegetables and lentils among a host of other agricultural items in Hyderabad. Metro has already trained 12,000 farmers in sheep breeding to international standards and will be setting up procurement centres across Andhra Pradesh for various other agricultural products.