One of the contributors to turning Metro Cash & Carry’s India operations profitable 15 years after entry, is its engagement with new-age food and tech start-ups, according to a top executive with the company.

In line with its motto of being the ‘champion for independent business’ the German multinational wholesaler is working with 20-25 new-age food and tech start-ups, many of which have now scaled up operations from a single city to multiple cities. Metro is currently on the verge of partnering with 8-10 more start-ups.

“Engaging with start-ups has helped us introduce an innovative product mix into our 27 wholesale stores. Start-ups are more agile and can introduce new products and variants much faster than large food companies. These new products give customers a reason to visit our stores more often,” Arvind Mediratta, MD and CEO of Metro Cash & Carry India Pvt Ltd, told BusinessLine .

Start-ups benefit from the company’s reach of 3.5 million registered businesses, each of which cater to 100 – 500 customers. Additionally, they also have access to Metro’s large HoReCa (hotels/restaurants/cafes) customer base. Metro’s 800-plus sales team promotes start-up products to their customers. Start-ups also receive insights and direction on product pricing and placement.

Wingreens Farms, a three-year-old start-up that makes signature dips, spreads, sauces, and baked snacks began its association with Metro Cash & Carry in 2017 with dips and now sells all its products in 22 of Metro’s 27 stores.

“We get direction and guidance from the top management on what kind of products work and what do not, access to large spaces in Metro stores for displaying and engaging directly with their customers. Till now, we were largely a consumer brand with small pack sizes, but with Metro’s guidance we have jointly worked on our HoReCa strategy and have recently introduced 1 kg packs for this customer segment. Metro Cash & Carry is among our top three customers today.” said Arjun Srivastava, co-founder, Wingreens Farms.

Packaged snacks start-up Sattviko, which is over a year old serves almost one million customers every month across 25 cities with healthy Indian snacks in a contemporary avatar. “Getting on board Metro helped us achieve this special milestone. While we are now present in over 3,000 large format stores, Metro was the first large format chain we worked with,” said Prasoon Gupta, founder director, Sattviko.

Metro also works with non-food start-ups like F Gear that makes bags, backpacks, and suitcases and with tech start-ups like Pazo which provides real time solutions in operations management. “We are constantly on the lookout to partner with start-ups that can pep up our product assortment, help improve our in-store customer experience and help our customers become more successful” said Mediratta.

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