India s Bharti to reach 150-store-mark by year-end
Bharti Enterprises plans to reach the 150-store-mark by the end of this year by opening 70 new ones, including those run under a unit and the ones run through a joint venture with US's Wal-Mart Stores Inc. It has about 80 stores at present.
Bharti runs two cash-and-carry stores through its joint venture with the world s largest retailer by revenue, Wal-Mart Stores, and these stores are also expected to go up to 10 by 2010-end.
A unit of Bharti Enterprises, Bharti Retail, also plans to increase the number of its mid-sized compact hypermarket stores, Easyday Market , to 12 from six now.
Bharti is the parent company of Bharti Airtel one of the leading mobile-phone operators of India in terms of the number of subscribers.