Gurgaon's First and Most Successful Independent F&G Retailer

SINCE LAUNCHING ITS FIRST OUTLET IN THE YEAR 2000 IN DLF GURGAON AT A TIME WHEN MODERN TRADE FOOD AND GROCERY STORES WERE NOWHERE ON THE RETAIL HORIZONS OF THE MILLENNIUM CITY, NEEDS SUPERMARKET HAS GROWN TO ADD 26 LARGE, MEDIUM AND SMALL STORES TO ITS KITTY, CLOCKING AN ADMIRABLE RUN RATE ON VARIOUS PARAMETERS OF RETAILING EXCELLENCE ALONG THE WAY. PROGRESSIVE GROCER SPOKE TO NEEDS SUPERMARKET’S MD AJAY DHAR, AND CEO, ARUN KHATTAR, ABOUT HOW THE GROCERY CHAIN HAS BEEN ABLE TO HOLD ITS OWN AND CLOCK STEADY GROWTH IN A HYPER-COMPETITIVE MARKET DOTTED WITH BIG-BOX NATIONAL RETAILERS AND THE SECRET SAUCE BEHIND ITS SUCCESS RECIPE.

- Sanjay Kumar

Back in the early 1990s when Modern Trade Food & Grocery was a distant concept in India, one man was frenetically looking for the right model to launch his own store. His epiphanic moment came when he came across a store named “Nanz” in Greater Kailash 1, Delhi.

For Major Murli Dhar (retd.), that was the moment when he realized the time had come to step out and turn his dreams into reality. Now that he had found the right model, he set about to scout for a suitable location to launch his store.

His search for an ideal place to set up his store took him to Gurgaon, which was then in the midst of a runaway real estate boom with shiny condominiums, building projects, and chrome-and-glass offices springing all over the place.

Needs Supermarket currently operates 26 supermarkets and convenience stores — spread across large, medium and small formats — with most of them located inside Gurgaon, whereas one is based out of Delhi.

“New housing societies, most of them in the premium category, were coming up in Gurugram then and my late father felt there couldn’t be a better place than to open a store close to one of these prime condominiums,” says Ajay Dhar, Managing Director, Needs Supermarket.