Metro Cash & Carry India, which plans to take its supermarket store count to 50 by 2020, has launched a prototype of its B2B e-commerce portal in Bengaluru.
On Tuesday, the company said its 19th wholesale distribution centre in Seelampur in East Delhi will open on October 15. This will be the company’s second store in Delhi after the one in Shahadra. The store in Seelampur was earlier home to French retail giant Carrefour that exited the Indian market in 2014.
Speaking to mediapersons here, Rajeev Bakshi, Managing Director, Metro Cash & Carry India, said the company had started a B2B e-commerce prototype, Metro Direct, which has been developed by the Indian team and offers non-food products to its existing customers in Bengaluru.
The portal for starters is offering products such as bar-ware, kitchenware and linen among others for hotels and restaurants.
Bakshi said with higher disposable incomes, consumers had become more demanding and this prototype was a step in the direction of being able to offer wider options to consumers, as also products that are sometimes not stocked at its store. Metro Cash will be testing the prototype for the next two-three months to gauge consumer response before it decides on further expansion. It has tied up with third-party logistics partners for delivery of the products. A company spokesperson said the focus of Metro Direct will be to look at making the back-end logistics efficient.
Expansion planLast year, the company had announced plans to expand its wholesale distribution centres to 50 by 2020. Bakshi said the company expects to open six-seven stores a year, and has been looking at expansion through clusters in North and South India. It will look at opening stores in the metros before moving to smaller cities.