Paris-headquartered retail chain Carrefour has returned to India through a new route, 12 years after it shut down all its five wholesale stores and left the country. The French food and grocery major had opened its first wholesale or cash-and-carry outlet in India in 2010 in New Delhi, while aspiring to get into the multi-brand retail trading category — the equivalent of supermarkets, hypermarkets, department stores and suchlike globally. Without a local partner and amid a lack of clarity on retail policy, the company exited India in 2014, a couple of months after the Narendra Modi-led government was sworn in.
Although the policy on foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail was cleared by the previous government under Manmohan Singh after much back and forth and was notified in September 2012, no foreign multi-brand retail chain operates in the country even now. Besides Carrefour, American retail major Walmart had been engaged with Indian policymakers to make its entry into multi-brand retail at a time when the consumption power of the Indian middle class was on the rise. While waiting for enabling conditions in multi-brand retail, these companies decided to invest in wholesale or cash-and-carry trade (business-to-business) instead, as the rules for doing business in this category were simpler.
While cash-and-carry trade barred selling directly to individual consumers, it allowed wholly-owned foreign businesses to enter this segment under the automatic route. Under multi-brand, FDI of up to 51 per cent was permitted in 2012, with accompanying specific conditions on local sourcing, back-end infrastructure investment and store locations. Even as there was no need for a local partner under the cash-and-carry rules, Walmart announced its tie-up with Sunil Bharti Mittal-led Bharti Enterprises back in 2006. It was a 50-50 joint venture for a wholesale business, with the first store opening in Amritsar in 2009. Meanwhile, it was getting ready for multi-brand much before the FDI policy got a green light. Carrefour, however, opted to rough it out on its own in the cash-and-carry space.
While Walmart appeared to be better prepared to navigate the Indian landscape back then, its partnership with Bharti ended in 2013 amid regulatory hurdles, allegations of corruption, and differences over the future of the business. Scott Price, who was Walmart Asia chief executive officer then, had said, “FDI has passed”, referring to the bottlenecks in the model. Walmart operated the cash-and-carry business on its own thereafter, even though its multi-brand retail aspirations remained just that. For the Bentonville-headquartered retail giant, however, a new avenue opened up subsequently, and it acquired the posterboy of Indian ecommerce, Flipkart. In 2018, it announced buying a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart in a $16 billion deal — the largest ecommerce transaction globally.
About two years later, Walmart’s cash-and-carry business came under the Flipkart fold. With that, and Carrefour as well as German retailer Metro exiting, a chapter of foreign majors’ wholesale play in India, as a stepping stone for some to get into multi-brand, came to an end. To put things in context, Metro, which was single-mindedly focused on cash-and-carry business for several years in India, sold its operations to Reliance Retail in 2023.
The format of doing retail business — single-brand, multi-brand, cash-and-carry, franchise partnership, online marketplace, ecommerce and so on — has had a special significance for India. While FDI in multi-brand retail is allowed on paper, there’s no case to suggest it has been allowed in practice too.
Carrefour has re-entered India through a franchise partnership with Dubai-based retailer Apparel Group. The Carrefour-Apparel partnership opened its first store in India at a mall in Greater Noida, not far from the capital city of New Delhi. In the absence of dedicated franchise legislation, such ventures are governed by multiple regulations, ranging from limited liability partnership rules to the Foreign Exchange Management Act.
For the French retail major, which had opened its first supermarket in Annecy (France) way back in 1960, it must have taken courage to enter the India market after a gap of more than a decade and having faced many setbacks, including protests by local traders and regulatory flip flops. By the way, Carrefour’s statements — first announcing its India foray in 2024 and then at the time of opening the first store in August 2026 — do not mention its earlier stint in the country. Perhaps, it wants to forget its past India experience and start afresh.
Walmart, which has been synonymous with foreign retail and is invested in running Flipkart, may still be keen to open supermarkets and hypermarkets in India, if policy permits. The question is whether it can do so against the backdrop of a political system that wants to protect the traders’ community and millions of jobs by blocking foreign retail majors. Recently, there’s been some change in the air. In July 2026, the Union government eased the foreign investment rules in ecommerce, allowing companies to buy products directly from Indian sellers and then sell them to overseas customers.
In a strictly controlled online marketplace business where direct buying and selling are barred for foreign companies, this relaxation has sent a signal of reform. Is more on the way to blur the lines among the various formats of doing retail business?
Nivedita Mookerji @nivmook is a consulting editor at Business Standard. Views are personal.