Joint venture to open 15 cash-and-carry outlets; 70 more Bharti Retail stores this year; several training centres in the pipeline.
Bharti Walmart (BW), the 50-50 joint venture (JV) between Bharti Enterprises and US retailer Walmart, is keen to train 40,000 students by 2016 for retail jobs. “This will tackle scarcity of skilled manpower in the retail space,” said Raj Jain, managing director and chief executive of Bharti Walmart and president of Walmart India.
The 17-store JV will add around 15 cash-and-carry outlets - they are called Best Price Modern Wholesale — this year, said Jain. Measuring 50,000-1 lakh square feet, BPMW outlets are mostly in tier-II cities like Amritsar, Jalandhar, Kota, Ludhiana, Raipur, Guntur and Vijayawada.
Bharti Retail (BR), the Bharti Group’s retail arm with 175 outlets, too, plans to add 70 stores this year, mainly in south and west India. BR operates Easyday (neighbourhood stores) and Easyday Market (compact hypermarkets) in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
BR and BW employ over 6,800 and 4,000 people, respectively. Together, they plan to employ “over 50,000 retail professionals by 2016, and will employ students” from the Bharti training centres, said Jain.
BW is currently training candidates at three centres in Bangalore, New Delhi and Amritsar through a public-private partnership with respective provincial governments and Centum Learning, a skills development firm.
“We plan to launch five more Bharti Walmart Training Centres (hubs) in places like Mumbai and 12 spoke centres in India by 2016,” said Jain.
The first centre was started in Amritsar in December 2008.
In this public-private partnership, state governments provide infrastructure and classrooms for training while BW designs the curriculum and offers scholarships to students. Training is free as most students are from weaker sections of society. For its part, Centum Learning manages the centres and undertakes training.
The partnership has trained 9,500 students till date in tasks like customer service and frontline roles on retail floors - jobs that could earn them an average monthly salary of `7,500.
“Over 170 trained students have been placed already at Easyday, and 350 more were given jobs at Best Price Modern Wholesale stores,” said Jain.
Several students went on to join other retail players, said Sanjeev Duggal, chief executive and director of Centum Learning.
Most students enroll at these training centres after finishing Class 10 or 12. A few graduates also train. Duggal said that candidates are selected on the basis of an entrance test and interview. Later, they are trained for two to three weeks for roles like floor associate, business development associate and team leader.
Successful students are awarded certificates which help them to be hired through non-governmental organisations, job fairs, mobilisation in rural areas, referral schemes, and presentations and seminars at colleges.
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