Barren Shelves Greet Shoppers At Several Big Bazaar Outlets This Festive Season – Media report

The shelves are almost bare, alleys deserted, shopping carts empty and there’s hardly anyone at checkout—that’s how several outlets of Big Bazaar, India’s biggest hypermarket chain, look during the festival season. Not just because consumers are hesitant to go out during the pandemic. BloombergQuint found that the debt-ridden chain, which Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani has agreed to buy, is running out of stock as some vendors, with their payments stuck, have stopped supplies. Biyani, India’s big-box retail pioneer, started in 1996 and set up Big Bazaar, Future Lifestyle and other retail outlets in the next decade and a half, betting on growing incomes in Asia’s third largest economy. He also piled on debt, which now stands at Rs 15,313 crore. The situation worsened during the Covid-19 lockdown as malls remained shut. The group, PTI reported quoting Kishore Biyani, lost nearly Rs 7,000 crore in income in the first three to four months of the pandemic, worsening its cash crunch. There has been no re-stocking ever since the outlet opened after the lockdown restrictions were eased, a Big Bazaar store employee in Noida said. The person, who didn't want to be identified out of employment concerns, said some vendors have stopped providing stock. The employee, working with the company for three years, said this was the first time they were facing such a severe inventory crunch.- BloombergQuint