ITC's Choupal Fresh combines retail with wholesale

Godrej has done it, Reliance plans to, and so do the Birlas. Now ITC has opened its first fresh-farm produce store in Hyderabad, and CNBC-TV18 takes a look.

This 2,500 square-foot store combines retail with wholesale. ITC''s Choupal Fresh''s first store, with its own cold chain, opens at 5:00 am every day to supply to wholesale and retail clients. It''s the first of 140 stores ITC plans to open in 54 Indian cities over the next three years. That''s an investment of Rs800 crore.

ITC has designed the supply chain in collaboration with Ingersoll Rand and Mitsubish''s Snowman.

S Sivakumar, CEO, Agri business, ITC says, "Ingersoll Rand has designed the climate-control shelves, the freezer trucks in which farmers send produce, the pre-coolers, and Snowman manages the logistics of the produce. We have apples from Kashmir and potatoes from Hassan."

The store stocks only fresh fruit and vegetable, sourced directly from farmers. And it expects the organised retail market for fresh produce will touch Rs5,000 crore in the next three years. That coincides with the culmination of its expansion.