D-Mart: Can Dalal Street’s most precious beat all odds?

D-Mart managed to grow when the industry was collapsing, unscathed by the first wave of e-commerce. Now, as online players eye India’s brick and mortar space and partner with domestic players, what’s D-Mart up to?

Retail company D-Mart is doing well. It has a CAGR of 38% and its profits have grown at a rate of 54%

D-Mart has negligible debt on its books and is profitable in one of the world’s most cut-throat markets

But the retail landscape in India is rapidly changing. E-commerce is partnering with local brick and mortar shops

Can D-Mart stay relevant? Will it follow the crowd?

Over the past decade, India’s organised retail sector has been collapsing like a house of cards.

2009 – Most stores of Vishal Retail were closed down due to misallocation of capital by its management. It was eventually sold to investors in 2011.
2012 – Burdened with rising debt, Future Group was forced to sell its Pantaloons chain to the Aditya Birla Group.
2013 – Kishore Biyani’s Future Group had to shut 40% of its food and grocery chain of Food Bazaar stores.

And yet, D-Mart, a chain of hypermarkets and supermarkets, which has 155 stores at present, has not had to shut down a single store in 15 years.

AUTHOR

Sidhartha Shukla

In his earlier stint at Moneycontrol, the website owned by the Network18 group, Sid wrote on cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity, business, and finance. Born in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, Sid has spent most of his life in Jalandhar, Punjab. He has a BSc in Mathematics from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Sid is a comic book nerd and a big fan of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Brian Azzarello. He can be reached at sidhartha at the rate the-ken.com

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