Published On : Mon, Dec 29th, 2014

We discovered the centrality of Nagpur before MIHAN, says Chief Operating officer of Big Bazaar

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Big Bazar chief
Nagpur Today.

“Not many in Nagpur know this yet, but Big Bazaar’s Future group, owns a 5 lakh sq feet warehouse near Butibori, the largest in the country.” Said Mr. Samson Samuel, COO of Big Bazaar’s future retail office, head of logistics for Big Bazaar who was in Nagpur for the Global Nagpur conclave.

Speaking exclusively to Nagpur Today Associate Editor Sunita Mudaliar, Mr. Samson said that while politicians and other industrialists were discovering the advantage of being in Nagpur  now since it is situated right at the centre of the country, his company realized the benefit of setting up their central warehouse here to reduce and optimize the cost of service to all its centres.

Before they came to Nagpur, they were operating from 40 cities and their costs of carrying inventories in so many places were phenomenal.

About 6 – 7 years ago, they seriously looked at Nagpur and realized if they used this city for its supply chains they could move all their inventory to one single city and close down warehouses everywhere else.

Co incidentally for them this was the time that container services from Nagpur were introduced both the Railways through Container Corporation and also by private players. “We have been favoring this model of transport over the road – though we ply on the roads a lot too” said Mr. Samson.

“Many people warned us against coming to Nagpur. ‘It is a small town, you wont get support services there’ they told us. You wont get even transporters but we persevered and today we have 55 to 60 trucks plying everyday for us” disclosed the COO.

In fact Big Bazaar was so happy with Nagpur and they have taken some local partners and formed OCLP – Orange City Logistics Park – and are building warehouses for others. Mr. Samson specified that they discovered the Bohra community people of Nagpur were good at building such warehouses and have and have outsourced the construction activity to them.

Big Bazar chief  (2)
As of today, Big Bazaar is not only the largest food retailer but also by far the largest in the fashion clothing segment. “No other player, comes even remotely close to us” said Mr. Samson proudly. “What about international chains like Walmart?”  asked NT. “They haven’t quite got the hang of the Indian markets. They seem to be struggling ” replied Samuel Samson candidly.

What is the next step for Big Bazaar? E – commerce, again with Nagpur playing a big part.

So move away Amazon and Flipkart, Big Bazaar is coming in your domain too!