If a retailer has both scale and brand pull, there is no reason why it cannot take a brand head on: Jamshed Daboo

At a time when popular interest has swayed toward comprehending the vast changes being brought on by technology and new consumer behaviours, some large box retailers are sounding a more focussed note, addressing real-time growth strategies. Trent Hypermarket MD Jamshed Daboo, for one, believes that retailers with enough scale should be taking their private label ambitions further and should consider developing national consumer brands.
Future Consumer Enterprise Ltd, Future Group’s product development arm, is the clearest manifestation yet of what Daboo is proposing that large scale retailers must do.
The company is India’s first sourcing-to-supermarket food company. “Starting from the seeding of food at the farm to its consumption from the plate, FCEL acts as a catalyst for each of its stakeholders. From sourcing, processing, retailing to final act of consumption – FCEL strikes a widespread cord between the lives of the farmer, a factory laborer, a worker on the shop floor and the housewife,” it states.
The company sources high quality commodities from world over, comprises an extensive portfolio of established brands in food and HPC space, builds urban convenience store for key metros and cash-n-carry rural distribution models for other cities across India. (Integrated front end to back end).
“Customers are seeking products at price points and there is a need for a certain type of product at a particular price point. At some places they are willing to give up a few things to achieve that price point and at times they are not willing to give up much to achieve that price point. Private labels play a role in meeting this need,” Daboo says.
“There is a lot of investment that goes into building a product,” he points out. “It’s not easy to imitate. So if you want to be a big player you actually have to be a product company,” he says in the October 2015 issue of Progressive Grocer magazine.
“Of course, it all depends on scale. We are not in that game right now because we don’t have the scale. But those who have the scale would be playing this game,” he asserts.
The extended unabridged interview with Jamshed Daboo appears in the October 2015 issue of Progressive Grocer India magazine. Please click here to subscribe