Indian retailer eyes expansion across Gulf

Dubai-based Indian retailer Dhananjay Datar is looking to expand his empire across the Gulf region.

Datar, managing director of Al Adil Group, is set to take his Peacock, Al Adil supermarket brands into Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, he said in an interview with India's Daily News & Analysis.

Known as the ‘masala king’, his flagship food brand Peacock already sells spices, staples, jams, canned foods in the UAE.

After taking over the family business from his father, he now runs 19 supermarkets across the UAE and has two flour mills and two factories.

He told the paper that four new supermarkets were in the pipeline in Sharjah and Dubai.

"We now are in the process of expanding our supermarkets to areas like Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. There is no other player in the Gulf that competes with us on Indian products, but there are many Indians there," he added.

He told the paper that his company will now be exporting 300 tonnes of Indian products per day to Gulf countries under the Peacock brand, growing from only 50 tonnes three years ago.

He said Al Adil sells more than 5,000 food items and other products in the Gulf through the supermarkets, most of which are sourced from India.

"Our plan is to open 20 new supermarkets across Gulf countries over the next two years," he added.

Datar said he also planned to expand the range of products sold at his Al Adil supermarkets to 2,000 within the next six months.