Wholesale Retailer Metro Cash And Carry To Foray Into B2B Ecommerce

Bengaluru-headquartered wholesale retail service provider Metro Cash And Carry will soon foray into ecommerce with the B2B model.

“In the next 60 to 90 days, before the end of this year, we would be starting our new ecommerce solutions,” Metro Cash & Carry India chief executive and managing director Arvind Mediratta told PTI.

Metro Cash & Carry is part of the Germany-based METRO AG Wholesale & Food Specialist Company. It is represented in 25 countries with over 750 self-service wholesale stores, and a headcount of more than 100,000 employees worldwide.

Cash and Carry wholesale is primarily defined by its customer base and the unique business model. This means, registered business customers visit a Cash & Carry outlet, select their own purchases and carry these back themselves instead of placing orders with multiple vendors.

Metro Cash and Carry commenced operations in India in 2003. The core Indian customers for the company include small retailers and kirana stores, hotels, restaurants, and caterers (HoReCa), corporates, SMEs, all types of offices, companies, and institutions, as well as self-employed professionals. Only business customers are allowed to purchase at METRO, all of them duly registered and provided with a customer registration card.

The store network offers close to 7,000 world-class products across a multitude of categories – such as fruits & vegetables, general grocery, dairy, frozen & bakery products, fish & meat, confectionery, detergents & cleaning supplies, health & beauty products, media & electronics, household goods and apparel – all under one roof, and claimed to be at transparent, low wholesale prices.

“Presently, kirana and trader segment contributes around 45%, 15% from hotels, restaurants, and caterers (HoReCa) and balance is from institution sales to offices, hospitals, colleges and other establishments,” Arvind said.

The company has plans to open a total of 50 stores by 2020 in markets such as  Karnataka, AP, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi NCR and UP. The company already has 24 offline stores operational – six in Bengaluru, four in Hyderabad, two each in Mumbai and Delhi, and one each in Kolkata, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Zirakpur, Amritsar, Lucknow, Vijayawada, Indore, Jaipur, and Surat. Reportedly, the company will also give small retailers a credit ranging from $1.54K – $23.18K (INR 1 Lakh to INR 15 Lakh), for a period of 7-14 days, in partnership with Capital Float.

The development was reported by LiveMint.