The First Trolley Is Through the Checkout

On 14 August 2026, on the eve of India’s Independence Day, Carrefour opened the doors of its first consumer-facing store in India at H&S Mall, Boulevard Walk, Greater Noida West. Nearly 12 years after exiting India, the French retail giant is back—but this time the battlefield is not wholesale. It is the Indian food basket. The timing is almost theatrical. As Indian consumers entered one of the year’s biggest Independence Day shopping periods, Carrefour chose the moment to put its first 50,000-plus-sq.-ft. store in front of them, stocked with more than 15,000 SKUs across fresh produce, grocery, bakery, household essentials and personal care, alongside locally sourced merchandise and exclusive international products.

But the more interesting story for India’s food industry is not simply that Carrefour has opened a hypermarket. It is what Carrefour believes an Indian food retailer needs to offer in 2026—and whether its global food-retail playbook can be localised sufficiently to win here. The first customer response, according to Vipin Bhandari, CEO, Carrefour India, has been encouraging. “The response has been very good. Customers are happy and appreciative of the experience in the store, the assortment and, of course, the prices,” he said. That short assessment captures the three things Carrefour now has to get right in India: experience, assortment and price. Underneath all three sits food.

Carrefour’s India Proposition Starts with the Food Basket

When Carrefour and Apparel Group announced their strategic franchise partnership in September 2024, Patrick Lasfargues, Carrefour’s Executive Director of International Partnership, made the positioning clear: food would be the focus, while non-food would represent a smaller part of the proposition. The partners also planned to source food products from India and introduce Carrefour private labels into the market.

The first store gives that strategy its physical form. The 15,000-plus-SKU assortment brings together fresh produce, grocery, bakery, household essentials and personal care, with the food proposition combining Indian sourcing with products from Carrefour’s international ecosystem. That balance is critical. Imported products can create discovery and differentiation, but Indian grocery economics will ultimately depend on local sourcing, competitive pricing, availability and replenishment. Carrefour has already indicated that it intends to source extensively in India. Lasfargues said the company would be competing on the same sourcing terrain as other retailers because all competitors are sourcing within the country, while acknowledging that India’s manufacturing and selling costs are lower than in many other markets. The partners have also spoken of potentially exporting from India within five years.

That makes the Indian food operation potentially more than a retail distribution business. If Carrefour builds sufficient scale, India could eventually become part of its global sourcing architecture, creating a second dimension to the India strategy beyond selling to Indian households.

The Private-Label Opportunity

For Carrefour, perhaps the biggest food opportunity in India lies not merely in imported products but in private labels. Private labels are deeply embedded in the Carrefour model, with the company saying in its India launch discussions that private labels accounted for 37% of turnover in France, pointing to the enormous headroom it sees in India.

The global strategy is becoming even more aggressive. Carrefour’s Carrefour 2030 plan places private labels and food transition at the centre of its value proposition, with the Group targeting private labels at around 40% of food sales by 2026 and aiming to grow private-label sales 1.5 times faster than national brands in Europe. For India, the opportunity is obvious but not straightforward. Private labels can give Carrefour greater control over price architecture, margins, differentiation and assortment, but Indian consumers have strong relationships with national FMCG brands, while regional brands can dominate individual categories and geographies. The winning private-label strategy therefore cannot simply transplant a European assortment; it will have to be built around Indian price points, Indian pack sizes, Indian taste preferences and Indian consumption occasions.

This is where Carrefour’s local merchandising and sourcing organisation becomes critical. The company is not simply importing a ready-made European assortment and putting a Carrefour sign above it. It is building a local category and sourcing organisation that has to determine what an Indian Carrefour basket should look like.

Fresh Could Be the Real Battleground

If price brings customers into a grocery store, fresh can determine whether they return. India’s modern grocery market has become increasingly sophisticated around fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, bakery, meat, ready-to-eat and other high-frequency categories. Fresh also has the potential to differentiate a physical hypermarket from a quick-commerce basket, where consumers increasingly use convenience platforms for top-up purchases.

Carrefour’s global strategy places fresh prominently alongside price, loyalty, choice and private labels. Its Carrefour 2030 plan also envisages reallocating store space towards growth categories and fresh food, reflecting the continuing importance of the category to the physical-store model. For the Greater Noida store, fresh therefore becomes an important test. A 50,000-plus-sq.-ft. store cannot survive simply by being a large grocery warehouse; it needs a compelling reason for customers to visit, browse, buy fresh products, complete their weekly shop and return. That makes the physical experience part of the food proposition—not an add-on to it.

A Global Food Giant, But India Is a Different Grocery Game

The scale of Carrefour’s global food operation is difficult to ignore. At the end of 2025, Carrefour had 15,719 stores in more than 40 countries and served around 80 million customer households annually through its stores and e-commerce platforms. Its 2025 gross sales were €91.484 billion, while its reported net sales were €82.102 billion.

Its latest reporting shows how quickly that global network continues to evolve. Carrefour had 15,415 stores as of 30 June 2026, with the network spanning hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience, cash-and-carry and other formats. Its first-half 2026 gross sales reached €43.85 billion, underlining the scale of the food-retail engine now being brought into India through a local franchise partnership.

For a company of this scale, India is not simply another country launch. It is one of the world’s largest and fastest-changing food-consumption markets. But size alone will not confer an advantage. The Indian grocery market has its own formidable ecosystem: Reliance Retail’s multi-format food business, DMart’s value proposition, Tata Trent’s Star network, regional supermarket chains, independent neighbourhood stores and a rapidly expanding quick-commerce industry. The consumer can now choose between a weekly hypermarket trip, a neighbourhood supermarket, an online grocery basket or a 10-minute top-up. Carrefour has to earn its place among all of them.

Day One at Carrefour India

The Biggest Challenge: Price Without Becoming Just Another Discounter

Carrefour’s own India messaging repeatedly emphasises quality at affordable prices. That is an attractive proposition, but also one of the hardest to execute. Indian grocery retail operates at relatively tight margins. In an interview following the India partnership announcement, Lasfargues acknowledged that prices and margins in India are lower than in Europe and that revenue at an equivalent store count would therefore be lower.

This is where scale matters. Carrefour needs enough purchasing power to negotiate with Indian suppliers, enough private-label penetration to create differentiated economics, enough store density to spread supply-chain costs and enough customer frequency to keep inventory moving. The first Greater Noida store is therefore not just a store-opening exercise; it is the first unit in a potential food-retail economics experiment.

The equation Carrefour has to solve is deceptively simple: low prices, fresh quality, international assortment, private labels, high inventory turns and repeat visits. The difficulty lies in delivering all of them simultaneously. That is what will determine whether the 50-store ambition becomes a scalable food-retail model or remains a limited international-brand presence.

The Man Leading the Grocery Comeback

That makes the appointment of Vipin Bhandari as CEO, Carrefour India, particularly relevant to the food story. Bhandari joined the business quietly some time before the launch and has been part of the team building the India platform. His background is unusually aligned with the challenge ahead. He previously served as Managing Director of Max Hypermarkets India, which operated SPAR in the country, and earlier held senior roles in Indian large-format retail.

Working alongside him is Saurabh Bansal, Chief Merchandising Officer, who joined Carrefour in September 2025 after serving as Executive Director and Chief Merchandising Officer at Spencer’s Retail, with earlier experience at Walmart and Snapdeal. The merchandising organisation also includes Raghu Tiwari, Category Head – Apparel & Fashion, and Deepak Gandhi, Category Head – General Merchandise, while Amritraj Kaur, Head of Marketing, brings experience across FMCG, grocery, CRM and omnichannel retail.

The team extends across sourcing, supply chain, operations, category management, finance, HR and store operations. For a food business, that organisational build-out matters almost as much as the store itself. Carrefour is effectively recreating its retail engine in India before attempting to scale it, with the first store providing the operating data from which the subsequent network can be shaped.

Apparel Group Enters India’s Food Fight

For Apparel Group, Carrefour represents a very different business from the international fashion, beauty and food-and-beverage brands that have driven much of its Indian expansion. The group’s India portfolio includes global brands across fashion, footwear, beauty and F&B, while Carrefour brings an entirely different operating rhythm: high-frequency purchasing, fresh-food management, replenishment, inventory turns, large supplier ecosystems and a much larger weekly household mission.

But the partnership gives Carrefour something it lacked in its first India innings—a local partner with established experience in bringing international brands into Indian retail environments. When the partnership was announced, Apparel Group operated more than 2,300 stores across 14 countries and 85-plus brands, with more than 250 stores across India. The food partnership is therefore also a strategic bet by Apparel Group to build another large consumer business around India’s expanding consumption economy.

From Five Wholesale Stores to 50 Food Stores

Carrefour’s first India story began in 2010 with five cash-and-carry stores in Delhi, Jaipur, Meerut, Agra and Bengaluru. The company exited in 2014 after failing to build sufficient scale and finding no partner for the consumer-retail expansion it wanted. The new plan is dramatically different. Carrefour and Apparel Group initially targeted five stores in Delhi-NCR during the first phase, followed by an ambition to build 50 stores across North India over five years, with formats ranging from approximately 8,000-sq.-ft. supermarkets and gourmet stores to around 30,000-sq.-ft. hypermarkets.

The first store is already larger than the original compact-hypermarket blueprint, at more than 50,000 sq. ft. That could be deliberate. A large-format first store allows Carrefour to test the widest possible food assortment, fresh departments, international products, private-label architecture, bakery, household categories and customer experience under one roof. But the eventual network will need more than flagship-sized stores. The 50-store strategy will only work if Carrefour can identify where a hypermarket makes sense, where a supermarket is better, and where a smaller proximity or speciality format can capture a different food mission.

The Quick-Commerce Question

No food-retail story in India can ignore quick commerce. Carrefour and Apparel Group were already considering e-commerce as part of the India plan, with Lasfargues saying the partners would decide whether to start online immediately or later and potentially consider quick commerce. But he also noted that Carrefour’s European experience showed the economics of quick commerce could be challenging.

That tension is important. Carrefour’s competitive advantage is its physical food-retail infrastructure; its disadvantage is that Indian consumers have become accustomed to extremely fast fulfilment. The answer may not be to replicate a 10-minute grocery model. Instead, Carrefour could use the hypermarket as a fulfilment and assortment engine, combining large-basket shopping with scheduled delivery, click-and-collect and other omnichannel services as the network develops.

Carrefour already describes its stores globally as increasingly serving multiple omnichannel functions, including order preparation, pickup, returns and exchanges. India will provide another test of how that model works in a market where speed has become a consumer habit.

Food Transition Comes to India?

There is another dimension that could become increasingly relevant as Carrefour builds its India business: food quality, transparency and health. Carrefour’s 2030 global strategy places the “food transition” at the centre of the business. The company aims for 50% of its food sales by 2030 to come from products contributing to a healthier diet, while expanding transparency around its own-brand food products.

How much of that philosophy will be translated into India remains to be seen. But it potentially opens another area of differentiation for Carrefour: not simply selling more food, but helping consumers make more informed food choices through sourcing, labelling, private brands and product transparency. For India’s rapidly evolving middle-class consumer, that could eventually become as relevant as price.

India Could Become More Than a Sales Market

The most intriguing long-term possibility is that Carrefour could eventually view India not merely as a market in which to sell food, but as a food-sourcing base for the wider Carrefour network. Lasfargues said Carrefour was looking to export from India within five years.

That ambition could create opportunities for Indian food manufacturers, processors, farmers and private-label suppliers to move from being domestic vendors to becoming part of a global retail supply chain. For Carrefour, India could offer competitive manufacturing, agricultural diversity, processed-food capabilities and an enormous supplier base; for Indian producers, the attraction would be access to Carrefour’s international markets.

But that will require Carrefour to build supplier relationships, quality systems, traceability, packaging standards and scale. The retail rollout and the sourcing strategy could therefore develop together, potentially making Carrefour’s India operation relevant not only to Indian consumers but also to the wider global Carrefour supply chain.

The Food-Retail Test Begins in Greater Noida

Carrefour’s first India store is ultimately a very large experiment. The company has arrived with an enormous global food-retail heritage, but it is entering a market where consumers are already spoilt for choice. It has a powerful international assortment, but Indian grocery retail is won category by category. It has global private-label expertise, but Indian shoppers remain highly brand-conscious. It has the scale to source globally, but its stores will have to compete on intensely local price points.

And it has chosen food as the centre of the proposition.

That makes the Greater Noida store more than Carrefour’s comeback address. It is the first laboratory for Carrefour 2.0 in India, where the business will test whether its combination of price, assortment, fresh food, private labels and international sourcing can generate the frequency and economics required for a national-scale business.

The early customer response, according to Bhandari, is already positive on the three fundamentals that matter most: experience, assortment and price. The next test is whether that response translates into repeat grocery missions, bigger baskets, strong fresh-food performance, private-label adoption and profitable store economics. If it does, Carrefour’s first 50,000 sq. ft. could become the foundation of a much larger food-retail platform.

Because in India, the battle for the grocery basket is ultimately won one household, one shopping mission and one fresh aisle at a time.

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Founded in 2018, Anardana has steadily grown across North India with a focus on contemporary Indian cuisine. The Sector 50 outlet marks the brand’s move towards larger restaurant formats as it continues to expand in key urban markets.

The new restaurant features a contemporary Indian-inspired design with terracotta flooring, timber finishes, natural stone, lattice screens and handcrafted details. A double-height central space with a bar serves as the focal point, along with multiple dining areas and elevated seating sections.

Along with the new outlet, Anardana has also expanded its menu with vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. New vegetarian dishes include Pulled Jackfruit Cannelloni, while the non-vegetarian menu features Butter Chicken Gujiya, Malai Chicken Roulade, Achari Chicken Breast, Lamb Ragout Sambusa and Mutton Goli Kebab. The dessert menu includes Rasgulla Tiramisu.

Shruti Malik, Founder, Anardana, said, “The launch of our Noida Sector 50 restaurant is a defining milestone for Anardana as we open our 14th outlet and our largest flagship destination yet. Noida has always been an important market for us, and the love we’ve received at our Sector 129 outlet gave us the confidence to deepen our presence in the city. With this flagship, we wanted to create more than just a restaurant; we’ve built a destination that celebrates modern Indian hospitality through elevated design, warm service, and a culinary experience that is both innovative and rooted in tradition. We look forward to welcoming guests to experience the next chapter of Anardana. We’ve always grown with our guests, and this is our biggest outlet because they asked for more of Anardana. The Sector 50 restaurant is about giving people a larger space to celebrate, an upgraded menu to explore, and a design that feels rooted yet new. Food and architecture come together here to create something memorable.”

With the Sector 50 launch, Anardana is expanding its larger-format restaurant portfolio while strengthening its presence in Noida and the wider North India food and beverage market.

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The menu showcases PAUL’s signature French classics, including croque-monsieur, quiche Lorraine, savoury crêpes, canelés, and its celebrated range of artisan breads, flaky viennoiseries, refined tarts, and indulgent pastries. Complementing these are European-inspired offerings such as Napoletana pizzas, crisp tartines, handmade pastas, risottos, fresh salads, wholesome bowls, and gourmet sandwiches.

Vaibhav Kaushish, Chief Operating Officer, PAUL India, added, “We are delighted to open our newest outlet at World St. at 4 Worldmark, Aerocity, marking our 15th outlet in India and sixth in Delhi NCR. This is one of the city’s most vibrant destinations, and this opening represents an important milestone in our continued expansion. Guided by our philosophy of Eat Well Live Well, we remain committed to using the finest ingredients and look forward to bringing the joy of French culinary excellence closer to our guests.”

SK Sayal, MD & CEO, Bharti Real Estate, said, “PAUL’s arrival at World St. adds a distinctive French culinary experience to the destination’s growing food and beverage offering. At World St., we are curating a diverse mix of restaurants and cafés that cater to evolving consumer preferences while creating a vibrant social destination. PAUL complements this vision well, adding another dimension to the eclectic dining experience at World St. We believe its presence is a natural fit, further strengthening the destination’s appeal as a place to dine, unwind and connect.”

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For most companies, food is a category. For Reliance, it is increasingly becoming an ecosystem. The distinction is important because the company’s food strategy is no longer defined by the number of grocery stores it operates or the brands it sells. It is being built across the entire journey of food—from farmers and sourcing to manufacturing and processing, from consumer brands to physical retail, from JioMart and omnichannel commerce to premium cafés and dining, with the consumer at the centre of the system. Business of Food estimates Reliance’s Food & Grocery business at approximately Rs. 2 trillion, while Reliance Consumer Products Limited (RCPL) has already reached Rs. 220 billion in FY26 revenue and is targeting a Rs. 1 trillion FMCG business by FY30. The scale of these numbers, combined with Reliance’s physical and digital reach, makes the company’s food strategy one of the most consequential developments in India’s consumer economy.

The Food Ecosystem is the Real Story

The easiest way to understand Reliance’s food ambition is not to look at its businesses individually, but to follow the journey of a product through the ecosystem. It can begin with a farmer and Reliance’s sourcing network, move through food processing and manufacturing, become part of an RCPL brand portfolio, reach consumers through Smart Bazaar or another food and grocery format, travel through JioMart’s digital network, or move through Metro India’s wholesale infrastructure to kiranas, restaurants and institutional customers. At the other end of the spectrum, Reliance Brands’ Food & Beverage business brings global concepts such as Pret A Manger, EL&N London and Armani/Caffè into India’s growing premium foodservice market.

Each of these businesses has a different operating model and serves a different consumer occasion. The strategic significance lies in the connections between them. Retail creates distribution for consumer brands; manufacturing provides greater control over product quality, cost and supply; digital commerce creates consumer and demand intelligence; wholesale expands distribution beyond Reliance’s own stores; sourcing connects the company more closely to the supply side of food; and foodservice gives it exposure to premiumisation and changing urban consumption patterns. Reliance is therefore building not simply a portfolio of food businesses, but an increasingly integrated food operating system.

Scale that is Already Difficult to Ignore

The underlying retail platform provides the foundation for this strategy. Reliance Retail reported Rs. 370,026 crore in gross revenue in FY26, processed 1.93 billion customer transactions and ended the year with 20,160 stores. Business of Food estimates that Food & Grocery accounts for approximately Rs. 1.8–2.1 lakh crore, or close to Rs.2 trillion, of this business. In Q1 FY27, Reliance Retail reported revenue of Rs. 90,408 crore, up 7.4% year-on-year, while continuing to invest in digital commerce and quick commerce.

These numbers matter because the food ecosystem is being constructed on top of a platform that already has extraordinary consumer reach. Reliance does not have to create an audience from scratch every time it enters a new food category. It can use its stores, digital platforms, distribution relationships, supply-chain infrastructure and consumer data to support new businesses and brands. That creates a fundamentally different starting point from a standalone FMCG company launching a brand, a digital platform building fulfilment infrastructure or a foodservice company expanding one restaurant format at a time.

A Retail Netwrok Built Around Consumptions Occasions

Reliance’s Food & Grocery retail strategy has also moved beyond the traditional idea of one large-format supermarket serving every need. Its portfolio increasingly addresses different shopping missions and consumption occasions. Smart Bazaar, which has crossed the 1,000-store mark, serves the large-format family and monthly-shopping proposition, while Smart Point takes food and everyday essentials closer to neighbourhood consumers and can also support fulfilment. Fresh Signature and Freshpik operate towards the premium end of grocery, while 7-Eleven addresses convenience and immediate consumption. Metro India adds a B2B layer, serving kiranas, hotels, restaurants, caterers and institutional customers.

This portfolio approach gives Reliance access to a much wider range of food consumption than a conventional supermarket network. A household buying its monthly groceries, a consumer making a neighbourhood top-up, a customer looking for premium or imported food, a restaurant procuring in bulk and a commuter seeking an immediate meal represent completely different occasions. Reliance can participate in each through a different format while potentially sharing sourcing, technology, logistics and inventory capabilities across the network.

The physical stores therefore become more than retail outlets. They can also function as inventory nodes, fulfilment points and consumer engagement platforms. This becomes particularly important as online grocery and quick commerce continue to change expectations around availability and delivery speed.

JIOMART Connects the Physical and Digital Network

JioMart increasingly provides the digital layer that connects consumers to this physical infrastructure. The opportunity is not simply to build another online grocery marketplace, but to use Reliance’s extensive store and supply-chain network as an integrated fulfilment system. A consumer may place an order digitally while the underlying inventory is positioned in a nearby store or distribution node, allowing the same physical infrastructure to serve both walk-in customers and digital demand.

This model becomes particularly relevant in quick commerce, where economics depend heavily on inventory density, fulfilment efficiency and proximity to consumers. Reliance’s existing retail footprint gives JioMart an asset that pure-play digital businesses have had to build separately. The challenge, of course, is to make that infrastructure work efficiently enough to deliver speed without allowing fulfilment costs to erode margins. The continued investments in digital commerce and quick commerce indicate that Reliance is willing to build for the long term as the boundaries between physical retail and digital grocery continue to disappear.

From Shelf Space to Brand Ownership

If the retail network gives Reliance reach, Reliance Consumer Products Limited gives it ownership of brands. This is perhaps the most significant shift in the food strategy because Reliance is moving beyond being primarily a distributor of products manufactured by others and increasingly participating across the FMCG value chain itself.

RCPL doubled its revenue to Rs. 220 billion in FY26 and has articulated an ambition to reach Rs. 1 trillion by FY30. The strategy is deliberately broad, spanning beverages, staples, packaged foods, dairy, snacks, spreads and other everyday-consumption categories. Rather than building a small number of premium brands, RCPL is targeting India’s enormous middle-class consumer base with what T. Krishnakumar has described as global-quality products at affordable price points. The proposition is not simply low pricing; it is the ability to make quality accessible by using scale across manufacturing, distribution and retail.

The company is also combining the revival of heritage Indian brands with the creation of new consumer propositions. Campa has become the most visible example, while SiL, Velvette and Independence form part of a wider portfolio intended to establish Reliance as a serious FMCG player across multiple categories.

Campa Shows the Power of the Model

Campa illustrates what happens when brand ownership is combined with manufacturing, distribution and retail scale. The revived Indian beverage brand has crossed Rs. 4,700 crore in gross sales and expanded its reach to more than 3 million retail outlets through a network of 5,000+ distributors. The significance of Campa is therefore larger than its own sales performance. It demonstrates how Reliance can take an established brand, combine it with capital and distribution muscle, and rapidly create national scale.

RCPL’s reach is also not confined to Reliance’s own retail stores. The company’s products are being distributed through general trade and other external channels, giving the portfolio access to millions of additional consumer touchpoints. This creates a two-way advantage: Reliance’s retail network provides a powerful internal route to market, while RCPL’s external distribution network allows its brands to reach consumers far beyond the company’s own stores.

Strategic acquisitions have added further capabilities. Manna Foods and Udhaiyam Agro Foods strengthen the staples, health-food and processing portfolio, while Lotus Chocolate adds confectionery manufacturing capabilities. These acquisitions are important not merely because they add individual brands or facilities, but because they increase Reliance’s ability to manufacture, process and scale products within a much larger consumer ecosystem.

Manufacturing Becomes a Strategic Advantage

As RCPL grows towards Rs.1 trillion, manufacturing becomes much more than a back-end supply function. It can determine product quality, cost competitiveness, supply resilience and the speed at which new categories can be developed. Reliance has therefore been investing in integrated manufacturing capabilities and food-processing infrastructure, with the proposed AI-powered integrated Food Parks representing a particularly ambitious component of the strategy.

The objective is to build a manufacturing backbone capable of supporting a rapidly expanding portfolio while using automation and artificial intelligence to improve efficiency. Reliance’s manufacturing investments also create the possibility of taking Indian consumer brands beyond the domestic market. RCPL is already expanding its international presence, and greater manufacturing scale can provide the supply consistency and cost structure required to support exports.

Fresh produce represents another important part of the equation. Better farmer relationships, sourcing infrastructure, cold chains and technology-enabled planning can potentially improve quality and availability while reducing wastage. In a food economy where the gap between farm production and consumer consumption remains significant, greater control and visibility across the supply chain can become a meaningful competitive advantage.

AI as the Connective Layer

Artificial intelligence could eventually become the invisible layer connecting much of this ecosystem. Demand forecasting can influence procurement; procurement can inform production; production can determine inventory positioning; inventory can support store and digital fulfilment; and consumer purchasing behaviour can feed back into product development, pricing and merchandising.

The value of AI in this context is therefore not simply automation. It is the ability to connect information across businesses that traditionally operate separately. A retailer sees what consumers are buying. A manufacturer knows what can be produced. A sourcing organisation knows what is available. A digital platform knows what consumers are searching for and ordering. Connecting these signals can potentially make the entire food value chain more responsive.

For a business operating at Reliance’s scale, even incremental improvements in forecasting, inventory turns, wastage or logistics efficiency can translate into substantial economic value.

Food Does Not End at the Grocery Shelf

Reliance’s food ambitions also extend beyond what consumers buy for their kitchens. Through Reliance Brands Limited’s Food & Beverage portfolio, the Group is building a premium out-of-home proposition around global concepts including Pret A Manger, EL&N London and Armani/Caffè. The portfolio currently includes 12 Pret A Manger outlets, two EL&N London cafés, with another planned for Delhi, and India’s first Armani/Caffè at Jio World Plaza in Mumbai.

This business operates on a different economic model from grocery retail. Here, the focus is on premiumisation, experience, international food trends and evolving urban consumption. Yet strategically it fits into the broader food ecosystem because it gives Reliance another set of consumer touchpoints and another window into changing food preferences.

The result is an unusually broad food footprint. A consumer can buy groceries at Smart Bazaar, place an order through JioMart, purchase an RCPL product through general trade, procure through Metro India, and experience a global café or dining concept through Reliance Brands. The occasions are different, but the consumer is the same.

The Bigger Food Play

India’s food economy is entering a period in which the traditional boundaries between retail, FMCG, manufacturing, logistics, digital commerce and foodservice are becoming increasingly blurred. Reliance is positioning itself for that convergence by participating across almost every major layer of the food value chain.

The ultimate test will be execution. Integration at this scale brings enormous opportunities, but it also creates complexity. The company will have to maintain speed and entrepreneurial agility while coordinating businesses with very different economics and operating models. It will have to convert scale into efficiency, brands into enduring consumer franchises and infrastructure into profitable growth.

Yet the architecture is already visible. Farmers and sourcing feed manufacturing; manufacturing feeds RCPL; RCPL brands feed retail and external distribution; retail feeds JioMart; JioMart and the physical network generate consumer intelligence; Metro extends the ecosystem into B2B and HoReCa; and Food & Beverage adds premium out-of-home consumption.

That is what makes the Reliance food story different from a conventional retail expansion story. It is an attempt to connect the journey from farm to fork—and increasingly to use every stage of that journey to strengthen the next one.

The full Business of Food cover story examines this architecture in greater depth, including Reliance’s food and grocery formats, JioMart’s omnichannel strategy, RCPL’s Rs.1 trillion ambition, Campa’s rapid scale-up, strategic acquisitions, manufacturing investments, AI-powered Food Parks, fresh-produce sourcing and the emerging premium Food & Beverage portfolio.

The question is no longer whether Reliance is building a large food business. The question is how far an integrated food ecosystem of this scale can reshape the competitive landscape of India’s food economy.

Read the complete cover story in the August issue of Business of Food.

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Average Daily Sales (ADS) for Popeyes® for Q1 were Rs 96K, comparable with established players in the category. The brand has also crossed ADS of Rs 100K in multiple existing markets. 

Popeyes® entered India in January 2022 through an exclusive partnership with Jubilant FoodWorks, opening its first restaurant in Koramangala, Bengaluru. After establishing its initial base in South India, the brand has since expanded into North and West India.

Vibhor Gupta, EVP and Chief Business Officer, Popeyes®, said, “Over the last four years, our ambition for Popeyes®️ in India has been clear: to build the most loved chicken brand in the country. The strong momentum we have built, with 97% year-on-year revenue growth and 40%+ like-for-like growth for the third consecutive quarter, gives us confidence in the strength of the brand, its growing consumer appeal and our on-ground execution. As we continue to scale, our focus remains the same – bring the distinctive Popeyes experience to more consumers across India.”

Sameer Khetarpal, CEO and MD, Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, said, “Popeyes is on fire in India—and we are just getting started. With 97% revenue growth, 40%+ LFL growth for the third consecutive quarter and strong store-level economics, the brand is proving that great food, bold flavours and great execution can create a powerful growth engine. We are stepping on the gas, with a clear ambition to build Popeyes into a ₹1,000 crore business over the next three to four years.”

Popeyes has retained its global product standards while adapting its offering to Indian preferences. With higher spice levels in India, Cajun flavours from Louisiana are well suited to Indian consumers. Popeyes® serves fresh, real chicken, which is marinated for 12 hours and hand-battered and breaded.

Popeyes® onboarded actor Rashmika Mandanna as its first brand ambassador in India to strengthen its consumer connect. A television commercial featuring her has been airing across Southern markets, further strengthening the brand’s visibility. Popeyes® has also partnered with Gen Z-focused creators such as Kusha Kapila and Akash Gupta to build stronger connections with younger audiences across social media.

During the quarter, Popeyes® introduced Bold Drinks in partnership with Sprite and Dip n’Drip Sauces, further expanding its menu with new formats while complementing its core food proposition. 

Jubilant FoodWorks has identified 200 locations for Popeyes®’ future expansion and plans to add approximately 35-40 stores annually over the next few years. The expansion will include entry into new markets as well as deeper penetration across existing markets.

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Rs 1,048 crore FY26 revenue. Rs 39 crore PAT. Rs 310.24 crore Q1 FY27 total income, up 69.35%. Rs 19.68 crore Q1 EBITDA. Rs 9.52 crore Q1 PAT, up 37.43%. 53 Patel’s R Mart stores. And in FY25, Rs 361.17 crore of processing revenue—almost as much as the Rs 368.87 crore generated by retail.

The numbers establish the scale. But they do not explain what is perhaps the more interesting story unfolding inside Patel Retail. The company may have become known as a value retailer through Patel’s R Mart, but Dhanji Bhai Patel is steadily building something much broader—a food business that reaches backwards to farmers and commodities, moves through processing and manufacturing, creates its own brands and ultimately reaches consumers through retail, exports and other channels.

It Started at a Grocery Counter

Dhanji Bhai’s story goes back to 1984, when he moved from Dudhai in Kutch to Ambarnath and joined his elder brother Bechar Patel, who was already in the grocery business. After six years of learning the trade, Dhanji Bhai opened his first grocery store under Patel Enterprises in 1990. The first Patel R Mart supermarket followed in 2003, marking the beginning of the organised retail journey that would eventually evolve into today’s Patel Retail. 

Those early years behind the grocery counter perhaps explain much about Dhanji Bhai’s business instincts. He learnt food not from a management textbook but from watching consumers shop, understanding what families could afford, seeing which products moved and, importantly, observing how much of the value in a food product was created before it ever reached the retail shelf.

That understanding would eventually take him in the opposite direction from the conventional retailer.

Instead of stopping at the shelf, Dhanji Bhai started looking behind it.

The Retailer Who Looked Backwards

As Patel’s R Mart grew, the question was no longer simply how to sell more groceries. It was how to gain greater control over what was being sold. Sourcing, quality, processing, packaging, availability and cost all sat outside the retailer’s direct control.

Dhanji Bhai’s answer was backward integration. Patel Retail moved into processing agricultural commodities and progressively built capabilities around spices, peanuts, sesame, flour and other food products. The company established its first food-processing factory in Dudhai in 2016, followed by further processing infrastructure and an agro-processing cluster. Its own history describes the strategy as directly sourcing commodities from farmers, bringing them to its factories for processing and packaging. 

What began as a way of strengthening the retail supply chain gradually became a business in its own right.

When Processing Became Almost As Big As Retail

This is where the numbers become revealing. In FY25, Patel Retail generated Rs 368.87 crore from retail sales and Rs 361.17 crore from processing sales. Processing therefore represented about 44% of revenue from operations—almost exactly the scale of the retail business.

The latest Q1 FY27 numbers reinforce the momentum. Total income reached Rs 310.24 crore, EBITDA stood at Rs 19.68 crore and PAT grew 37.43% to Rs 9.52 crore. But the more important structural point is that Patel Retail now has two substantial engines: the stores that connect it to the consumer and the processing business that increasingly controls what goes into those stores.

The supermarket is the visible business. The food engine is becoming the deeper business.

From Dudhai to The Food Factory

There is an appealing circularity in Dhanji Bhai’s journey. He comes from a farming family in Dudhai, Kutch, and today Patel Retail has built significant food-processing capabilities in the same region. The company’s facilities handle whole and powdered spices, wheat flour, peanuts, sesame and other agricultural commodities, with processes spanning cleaning, sorting, grading, drying, grinding, pulverisation and packaging. 

This is more than manufacturing for manufacturing’s sake. It gives Dhanji Bhai greater control over the journey of a food product—from the commodity that enters the factory to the packaged product that leaves it.

His farmer background also shapes the sourcing philosophy. Patel Retail says it directly sources commodities from farmers and highlights direct procurement, reasonable rates, transparency, immediate payments and farming guidance as part of its farmer ecosystem. 

That creates a chain that is unusually integrated for a retailer: farmer, sourcing, processing, packaging, brand, retail and export.

Indian Chaska: When a Private Label Wants to Become a Brand

The next logical step was branding. Indian Chaska is perhaps the clearest indication that Dhanji Bhai is thinking beyond the traditional private-label playbook.

The brand spans whole spices, pure spice powders and blended spices, with a portfolio that includes regional products such as Rajapuri Haldi, Palitana Mirch, Malvani Mix Masala and several varieties of coriander, chilli and turmeric powders. 

But Indian Chaska is being built with ambitions beyond Patel’s R Mart. In October 2025, Patel Retail appointed Sanjeev Kumar Nigam as CEO of Indian Chaska specifically to strengthen the brand and expand its presence pan-India. Dhanji Bhai described the mandate around market penetration, customer engagement and the brand’s pan-India growth. 

That distinction matters.

A private label primarily strengthens a retailer.

A consumer brand has to earn a place in the consumer’s mind—and eventually on shelves that do not belong to its parent retailer.

Indian Chaska is where Dhanji Bhai’s retailer mindset is beginning to meet FMCG ambition.

Patel Fresh: The Everyday Food Basket

If Indian Chaska gives Patel Retail its flavour and spice identity, Patel Fresh takes it deeper into everyday consumption. The brand covers pulses, nuts, dry fruits, rice, sugar, jaggery, flours and millets, giving Patel Retail a much wider food basket beyond spices.

That combination is strategically attractive. Spices and blends can provide differentiation and brand identity, while staples such as pulses, rice and flour generate regular household consumption. And because both can be supported by the same sourcing and processing infrastructure, the economics become increasingly interconnected.

The model is beginning to look less like a retailer adding private labels and more like a food company using retail as one of its distribution engines.

The Supermarket as a Food Laboratory

There is another advantage Dhanji Bhai has over a conventional FMCG entrepreneur: he owns the consumer interface.

Patel’s R Mart gives the company a live environment in which products, pack sizes, price points and categories can be tested. The store is therefore not simply where the final transaction takes place; it can also provide valuable feedback on what consumers want and how they respond.

That becomes particularly useful when the company is trying to expand its own brands. Instead of building a food product in isolation and then searching for distribution, Patel Retail can learn from its own shoppers before taking products into wider markets.

It is a retailer’s route into FMCG: understand the shelf before trying to conquer the market.

The First Export Was a Small Step Towards a Bigger Food Business

Dhanji Bhai’s export journey is equally revealing. Patel Retail’s international business began with food exports and has since expanded across a much wider geography. The company says it has exported to more than 35 countries, covering staples, groceries, pulses, spices and pulps under Patel Fresh and Indian Chaska as well as products made for customers’ own brands.

That last part is particularly significant. Patel Retail is not simply exporting its own products. Its processing infrastructure can also support customers looking for private-label food manufacturing.

The factory therefore has two possible lives: it can create Patel’s own brands, and it can quietly manufacture for somebody else’s.

The Factory is Becoming a Platform

This may ultimately be the most interesting part of the food strategy. Patel Retail is using its processing infrastructure not only for its own brands but also to improve utilisation and develop private-label opportunities for domestic and export customers.

The company has specifically described using Indian Chaska for whole and powdered spices and Patel Fresh for products such as atta, while private-label production and export customers help keep the processing infrastructure productive beyond seasonal peaks. It is also offering one-stop private-label capabilities across categories including spices, atta, sesame and peanuts. 

That changes the role of the factory.

It is no longer simply a support function for the supermarket.

It can become a manufacturing platform serving brands, retailers, exporters, HoReCa and institutional customers.

The Food Business Behind The Retail Business

This is why Patel Retail deserves to be looked at differently today. The company’s identity was built around value retail, but its food capabilities have become too substantial to be considered merely backward integration.

There is now a connected ecosystem: agricultural sourcing feeds the processing plants; processing feeds Patel Fresh and Indian Chaska; the retail network gives those brands an immediate consumer channel; external distribution can take them beyond Patel’s own stores; and exports open another market altogether. Patel Retail itself describes its model as combining modern retail with backward integration in agri-processing to improve quality, cost efficiency and supply reliability. 

For Dhanji Bhai, the logic is remarkably simple.

If you understand the consumer, understand the commodity and control more of the journey between the two, you have a better chance of building a durable food business.

The Next Battle is Brand, Not Capacity

The infrastructure is increasingly in place. The next challenge is consumer pull.

Can Indian Chaska become a nationally recognised food brand? Can Patel Fresh build awareness beyond the Patel Retail ecosystem? Can external distribution become a significant growth engine? Can private-label manufacturing scale? And can exports continue to grow while maintaining quality and margins?

These are very different questions from those Dhanji Bhai faced when he was running his first grocery store in Ambarnath. But the underlying instinct is the same: understand what the consumer wants and build the capability to deliver it.

From Retailer to Food Entrepreneur

What makes Dhanji Bhai’s story particularly interesting is that there was no sudden announcement that Patel Retail was becoming a food company. The transformation happened one logical step at a time.

The retailer wanted greater control over sourcing, so it moved closer to farmers. Better sourcing led to processing. Processing created manufacturing capability. Manufacturing enabled private labels. Private labels created the opportunity to build brands. Brands needed wider distribution. And once the company had sourcing, processing and manufacturing capabilities, exports and private-label production became natural extensions.

One capability created the reason to build the next.

That is why Patel Retail today is more than the 53 stores that consumers see. Behind those stores is an increasingly integrated food chain—one that begins with agricultural commodities and ends not only at the Patel’s R Mart checkout counter, but increasingly with a branded product, an export customer or another retailer’s shelf.

For Dhanji Bhai, the grocery store was where the journey began.

The bigger ambition now is to build the food business behind the grocery store.

The post The Retailer Who Is Building The Food Chain appeared first on Business of Food.

India’s frozen food market has nearly doubled in five years, growing at a CAGR of 15% from Rs 9,200 crore in FY 2020 to Rs 18,400 crore in FY 2025, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17% to reach Rs 40,500 crore by FY 2030. Behind these numbers sits a less obvious story built by hotels and restaurants rather than convenience stores and supermarkets.

For many decades, frozen food in India subsisted at the margins of the shopping list. Supermarket freezers stocked a narrow set of products: green peas, French fries, frozen parathas, a handful of vegetarian and non-vegetarian snacks. These served consumers looking for occasional convenience rather than everyday meal solutions. Fresh food was the default. Frozen products were often perceived as substitutes reserved for situations where fresh alternatives were unavailable or would take more time to prepare than in hand.

This changed. Frozen food is no longer shorthand for convenience alone. It now carries associations with indulgence, consistency, quality, hygiene and food safety. Interestingly, this transformation did not originate in supermarket aisles. It began inside kitchens of food services establishments such as hotels, restaurants, cafés, quick service restaurants (QSRs), cloud kitchens, etc. The rapid expansion of India’s organised foodservice sector has quietly reshaped the frozen food category.

As restaurant businesses scaled operations across multiple cities and formats, their menus opened a market for similar products on the retail shelves. This all started with the humble French fries and has moved to exotic Southeast Asian delicacies now being sold through the deep freezer aisles of the retail stores. The other thing that the HoReCa has done and would not have been achieved by traditional retailers is to change the perception of the Indian consumer in accepting frozen food in their daily life.

Every Indian household is now looking at achieving the perfectly crisp French fries at home, which is being sold at McDonald’s; perfect burger assembly like Burger King; the crunchiest snack served at KFC; and the most juicy momos being prepared at organised food services outlets. Consumers experienced products they liked the most first through restaurant brands or hotels they trusted, long before they consciously started purchasing them from supermarket freezers.

Another important driver that pushed the Frozen Food categories in the pantries of Indians was the COVID-19 pandemic. Restaurant closures during lockdown periods, compounded by intermittent restrictions on home delivery, removed consumers’ primary access point to food through organised foodservice. In the absence of these channels, consumers turned to retail frozen aisles as the closest available substitute, seeking to replicate a restaurant-style eating experience within the home.

The progression of the category highlights a clear shift in innovation priorities. Early growth was driven by Western QSR staples such as French fries, nuggets and burger buns, led by players like McCain Foods India. As organised foodservice expanded and consumer tastes evolved, manufacturers increasingly localised their portfolios by introducing Indian snacks such as Aloo Tikki, Veggie Fingers and stuffed parathas, followed by regional formats including Sabudana Patty, Vada Pav Patty and Mumbai Aloo Vada.

The evolution of the category also reflects a broader shift in consumer expectations. Frozen foods are no longer purchased solely to save time; they are increasingly chosen to recreate indulgent, restaurant-style eating experiences at home. As organised foodservice exposed consumers to a wider range of cuisines and premium snack formats, expectations moved beyond basic convenience towards greater variety, authenticity and quality.

This shift is evident in the products now entering the category. Consumers who were once satisfied with frozen peas and French fries are increasingly seeking café-style appetisers, premium asian cuisines, regional street-food favourites and complete meal solutions. Rather than replacing fresh food, convenience frozen products are increasingly serving occasions where consumers want restaurant-quality experiences without the time or cost associated with dining out.

The category has since expanded beyond snacks into premium global cuisines and complete meal solutions. Brands such as Prasuma and ITC Master Chef have introduced products including Momos, Bao Buns, Korean Fried Chicken, Falafel Kebabs and Piri Piri Prawns, while players such as Haldiram’s, Meatzza, MTR and Gits have expanded frozen offerings across regional snacks, curries and complete meals. 

What matters here is the order of events. These consumers weren’t encountering frozen food for the first time when their schedules got tighter. They had already eaten it. When time constraints began shaping grocery decisions, frozen food wasn’t an unfamiliar risk. It was a familiar product that could now be made at home in a fraction of the time. HoReCa built the confidence. Changing household routines, accelerated by the pandemic’s disruption to daily schedules and further reshaped by post-pandemic work patterns, supplied the demand to match it.

This shift was further reinforced by changing household dynamics. Women’s workforce participation increased from 23.3% in 2018 to 41.7% in FY2024, before moderating to 40.0% in FY2025, contributing to the rise of dual-income households and increasingly time-constrained lifestyles. As less time became available for everyday cooking, consumers sought convenient meal solutions without compromising on quality. Frozen foods, already familiar through organised foodservice, increasingly transitioned from being an occasional substitute for fresh food to a practical way of recreating trusted restaurant experiences at home.

The Freezer is Becoming the New Pantry

The capital now flowing into this category is not speculative, and the pattern of investment tells its own story about where confidence in this market is coming from. Within a single recent window, an FMCG incumbent acquired a premium frozen brand for approximately Rs 300 crore. A domestic potato processor committed Rs 1,000 crore to triple its capacity and pivot from export dependence to domestic growth. An agri-processing group entered the ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat meat segment through a joint venture aimed squarely at commercial kitchens. India’s largest grocery platform launched its own private-label frozen brand. Its largest dairy cooperative introduced a frozen foods range for the first time.

A global furniture and lifestyle retailer entered the category with ready-to-cook Indian and international meals.

ITC, HyFun Foods, Allana-Chatha, BigBasket, Amul and IKEA have little in common as businesses, except that all of them looked at India’s convenience frozen food market and decided, around the same time, that it was worth entering or expanding into. That convergence is the real signal. These are not niche bets. They are bets on a structural change in how urban India eats, one that restaurants have been quietly building for well over a decade, one consistent meal at a time.

The consumer who once treated frozen food as a compromise has largely been replaced by one who expects it to be good, because restaurants taught her it could be. Working professionals reaching for a frozen paratha or a ready-to-cook kebab on a weeknight is not settling for less. They are repeating a choice they have already made hundreds of times before. Restaurants did not simply benefit from India’s growing frozen food industry.

They created it, through the consistency of their kitchens, the scale of their supply chains, and the trust they extended, invisibly, to every frozen ingredient they cooked and served. The pandemic accelerated the shift from restaurant plate to home freezer, but it did not start it, and it will not be the reason it continues. The commercial kitchen has been the category’s most effective sales force, and as more of urban India’s routines bend around less time and higher expectations, the freezer is fast becoming the new pantry.

The post Beyond Retail: The Growing Influence of HoReCa on India’s Convenience Frozen Food Market appeared first on Business of Food.

Singh brings a diverse leadership background spanning marketing strategy, brand development, growth initiatives, and consumer-focused businesses.

Prior to joining ITC Hotels, Singh served as Vice President – Head of Marketing & Growth at Haldiram Snacks Food Pvt. Ltd., where he led marketing and growth initiatives for the company’s portfolio. Before that, he was associated with ITC Limited as Head of Marketing & Growth – ITC Food Tech, gaining experience in building and scaling food-focused businesses. His career also includes marketing and brand leadership roles at Happilo, Blackberrys Menswear, Cheil Worldwide, and Spencer’s Retail.

With experience spanning food brands, hospitality, retail, and advertising, Singh brings a cross-category perspective to his new role.

The post Rajiv Singh Joins ITC Hotels Limited as Head of Food and Beverage Marketing appeared first on Business of Food.

Kothari brings more than 25 years of experience across banking, corporate finance, fundraising, treasury, business transformation, and financial strategy. During his leadership journey at Parag Milk Foods, he has been closely involved in finance, business planning, governance, capital allocation, and growth initiatives, contributing to the company’s broader business and financial strategy.

Prior to taking on the CFO role, Kothari served as Finance Specialist at Sadhana Nitro Chem Limited, where he worked across capital raising, investor relations, and financial controls. Earlier, he spent more than 16 years with Citi, progressing through several senior roles spanning corporate banking, relationship management, SME acquisitions, regional sales, and operations. He began his career with Citigroup Global Services, gaining early experience in the financial services sector.

With his extensive experience across financial management and banking, Kothari brings a combination of strategic finance expertise and operational understanding to his new role.

The post Parag Milk Foods Elevates Rakesh Kothari as CFO appeared first on Business of Food.

Kkhavo is developing a portfolio of clean-label foods, heritage staples and nutrition-led products, focusing on traceable sourcing, farmer relationships, responsible agricultural practices and stringent quality controls. Beginning with heritage grains, the brand plans to expand into premium foods, functional foods and nutraceuticals.

Its first offering, premium Kala Namak rice, is a GI-registered heritage grain cultivated for over 2,500 years in Uttar Pradesh’s Terai region. With a low glycemic index of 49–53, Kala Namak rice is positioned as a diabetic-friendly choice. It is rich in iron and zinc, contains antioxidants and dietary fibre, and is naturally gluten-free, non-GMO and vegan.

Commenting on the launch, Mudit Goel, Co-founder, Kkhavo, said, “Consumers today want greater clarity about the food they bring into their homes. Before launching our first product, we conducted more than 250 quality and nutritional tests covering its purity, safety and nutritional profile, and made the reports publicly available on our website. This commitment to transparency will remain central to every category Kkhavo enters.”

Founded by Mudit and Minal Goel, Kkhavo draws upon their ancestral roots in the heartland of Kala Namak cultivation, more than two decades of experience in international markets and third-generation relationships with farming communities. Its integrated farm-to-mill supply chain includes direct farm sourcing, in-family milling and quality oversight at every stage, helping ensure authenticity and consistency across batches.

The post Kkhavo Launches in India With Premium Heritage Grains, Nutrition-Focused Foods appeared first on Business of Food.