Big Interview: Changing Trends

SPAR Hypermarkets is in India through a license agreement between the Max Hypermarkets of Landmark Group and SPAR International, the world’s leading food retail and wholesale chain, which has 12,500 stores across 44 countries and serves around 15 million people. Landmark Group is involved in retail of apparel, footwear, consumer electronics, cosmetics and beauty products, home improvement and baby products. The Amsterdam-based SPAR was founded in 1932 by Adriaan van Well. SPAR promises to elevate shopping from a daily chore to a world class, value for money experience. SPAR is in India over a decade now. What’s your current positioning and market share, SPAR is one of the fastest growing Hypermarkets in the country. As per recent Nielsen reports, we are growing much faster than the rest of modern trade. We serve over 30 million customers annually through 20 stores across Bangalore, Mangalore, Shimoga, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Chennai. We believe that market shares are a result of delivering on a vision and a mission, consistently; and we will continue to do this. We directly employ 2,400 people in India.

Our new 55,000 sq.ft outlet at Vega City Mall will offer over 50,000 products through 25 billing counters. In our stores, approximately 60 per cent of the shelf space is allocated to food categories and 40 per cent to non food categories. We use innovative technology and our billing time --- customers standing in the queue---is almost reduce by 60 per cent. In India, SPAR Hypermarkets operates over one million square feet area across 20 stores in nine cities. The average store size is 40,000 sq.ft. We crossed revenues of Rs 1,000 crore last year and have been clocking double digit growth of late. We plan to increase our retail space by 40 per cent during the current financial year. How is SPAR different from other FMCG/food retail chains in India, You keep talking about innovative formats and experiential shopping. How do you offer tangible difference to your shoppers, Our vision is to be the most engaging and innovative hypermarket in India. We are working towards delivering this to our customers by focusing on four core pillars: Freshness, Value, Choice and Service. As part of the Landmark Group, we are deeply rooted in being customer centric and customer driven.

Our format is in a state of evolution, which is a result of past ten years’ experiences with customers, products and services and this is an evolution, which will continue. Our approach towards merchandise is driven by ever evolving customer needs, which is why categories like SPAR Natural, which is about Health & Wellness are part of our journey. We have expanded into the cultural arena with Grandmas Corner, which enables modern smaller families to enjoy a bit of nostalgia. For us everything is about ensuring that our customer needs are met and that they keep coming back for more. With differentiated offerings such as Wonder Years for Kids, Beauty, Taste of India, Taste the world, Freshly, SPAR Natural and more. We have brought in technology innovation in a big way. Our stores have self-assist kiosks, an interactive digital SPAR Studio and the SPAR play pad where children are free to express themselves.

Our stores bring together EQ (Emotional Quotient) & IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to create an innovative and differentiated customer experience. We see the results in our loyalty programme share, which is the best in the industry. What kind of loyalty programmes do you run here and how are they working, We keep listening to our customers and there are clear areas where customers have shown confidence in us. Firstly, they see strength in our assortment, with specific reference to our fresh produce with great choice in our food offering. The value offering in home & apparels is also very attractive. How is Omnichannel catching up in the Indian retailing space, We see Omnichannel as being the way forward for most businesses. We are seeing shakeups in pure play ecommerce sector and an increased convergence based on how consumers behave. But our definition of Omnichannel is a little different. We think there is space for all kinds of channels - website, store, applications, phone & order, truck based business and more.