Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, is set to open India’s first 7-Eleven convenience store, as his Reliance Industries Ltd conglomerate boosts its retail presence in the vast market of 1.3 billion people.
Yesterday’s announcement of a franchise agreement comes two days after India’s second-largest supermarket chain, Future Retail Ltd, terminated its 2019 deal with 7-Eleven Inc to open 1,000 stores.
India’s retail sector is dominated by family-owned “mom and pop” outlets, but oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance added 1,500 new stores last year to make a total of nearly 13,000.
Photo: Reuters
“7-Eleven is among the most iconic global brands in the convenience retail landscape ... [and] will offer Indian customers greater convenience and choices within their own neighborhoods,” said Isha Ambani, director of Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd and Mukesh’s daughter.
The first store is to open on Saturday in a Mumbai suburb, followed by a “rapid rollout in key neighborhoods and commercial areas, across the Greater Mumbai cluster to start with,” Reliance said.
Debt-ridden Future Retail, which owns popular brands such as Big Bazaar, said that it was unable to “meet the target of opening stores and payment of franchisee fees” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Indian Supreme Court in August blocked a US$3.4 billion deal struck by Reliance to buy Future Group’s retail assets after Amazon.com Inc objected to it, claiming the deal amounted to breach of contract.
Based in Irving, Texas, 7-Eleven operates or licenses more than 77,000 stores in 18 countries and regions, but has faced a delayed entry to the Indian market.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
RSS