One of the largest e-commerce platforms which are owned by the US-based Walmart, Flipkart is now planning to open the offline brick and mortar grocery stores across he PAN India in order to click the food retail industry in the entire country where around 100% Foreign Direct Investment is allowed.
As per the FDI Norms, foreign investors are not even allowed to open retail stores in the country. Moreover, in the food retail business, a foreign investor is even allowed to open any of the physical stores.
As of now in India, Flipkart parent Walmart is also allowing only to operate a business to business wholesale segment in India due to the country FDI regulations and around 50-60% of Walmart Global sales come from the food and as a retail giant does not want to be left behind, its strategy of opening all the offline stores.
On the other hand, Mukesh Ambani led Reliance is also doing the vice versa by launching a new e-commerce platform in India which will help to connect the brick and mortar stores to the online channel of Reliance Retail.
Source: Flipkart