Ten years after exiting the Indian market, French retail giant Carrefour is making its way back to the country. The company on Monday said it is tying up with Apparel Group, a Dubai-based retail company that has over 250 stores in the country, selling fashion and lifestyle brands such as Aldo, Bath and Body Works and Charles & Keith, for its second India outing.
The first few stores will roll out in 2025, beginning with the Delhi-NCR region and then moving to the rest of the country.
The re-entry of Carrefour will mark a change in strategy for the French retailer, which had pulled out of the Indian market in 2014, citing lack of business opportunity, closing its five wholesale or cash-and-carry stores after only a four-year presence in the country.
Carrefour, known for its hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores, has over 14,000 outlets in more than 40 countries.
“India is now the cornerstone of the Carrefour International Partnership 2026 development plan, marking a significant step forward in our strategy to expand into over 10 new countries by 2026,” Patrick Lasfargues, Carrefour’s executive director of international partnership, said.
While Indian retail rules permit 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in wholesale or cash-and-carry operations, FDI in multi-brand retail is capped at 51%.
In 2014, Carrefour had failed to find a local partner to expand its business into multi-brand retail despite holding talks with the Bharti group, which had broken its partnership with American retail giant Walmart.
This time the French retailer has come prepared, working out a franchise pact that will see the Apparel Group open stores as well as introduce its exclusive brands in India. According to the retailer, the strategy is to tap into India’s large base of consumers, their growing purchasing power and leverage the urbanisation trend sweeping the world’s fifth-largest economy, which will see the retail market increasingly getting organised.
Both store and exclusive brand launches are expected to happen in 2025, beginning with the Delhi-NCR region, where the first set of stores, likely to be five in number, will be launched.
“We will be expanding with multiple formats across the country to adapt to this dynamic country’s retail landscape,” Lasfargues said.
“We plan to open our first Carrefour stores during the summer of 2025. Our goal is clear: to offer the best products at very attractive prices to all Indian customers and make Carrefour their preferred choice for shopping,” Nilesh Ved, owner of Apparel Group & chairman of AppCorp Holding, said.
While the Apparel Group is best-known for its fashion and lifestyle brands, it has experience in food and beverages retail as well, where it runs a joint venture entity in India with investment firm Gateway Partners. This JV called AG Café has the franchise rights of Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons, which has over 25 stores in key cities such as Bengaluru, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Pune, Gurugram, Noida, Ludhiana and Mumbai, since its debut in August 2022.