Inside the Dubai playbook: How Apparel Group’s Nilesh Ved is using Carrefour to crack India’s complex retail market

Dubai: There is a particular kind of energy that follows Nilesh Ved around, the sort that comes from a man who married off his daughter 45 days ago and is now, without missing a beat, opening one of the biggest Carrefour stores in Noida

When I catch up with him in India for this episode of The Hustle, the retail heavyweight behind Apparel Group is exactly where he seems most comfortable: mid-launch, mid-thought, and mid-expansion.

It feels fitting that our conversation, usually anchored in Dubai, has, for once, gone on the road with him.

"That's true. We have been working with Gulf News for a very long time since we started our company," he tells me, before we get into the real story: why a company synonymous with fashion and lifestyle brands such as Bata, Bodyworks, Aldo, Charles and Keith, and Victoria's Secret decided to wade into the unglamorous, wafer-thin-margin world of grocery retail.

Learning from Mall of the Emirates

Ved's answer takes us back to Dubai, to a mall, in fact, that he says split retail history into a before and after.

"I say retail before Mall of the Emirates and after Mall of the Emirates, specifically in Dubai, point of view," he says.

"Mall of the Emirates changed every retailer's fortune, and every landlord, every mall owner wanted to benchmark that. That became the standard."

Carrefour in the UAE's MOE and other prominent malls, developed and operated by Majid Al Futtaim, brought in the hypermarket chain Continent, which was later bought over by Carrefour, setting off a wave of expansion across the Gulf that eventually stretched into cinemas, entertainment centres like Magic Planet, and a sprawling shopping mall portfolio.

For Ved, it was a case study too good to ignore.

"That's a business model we should learn from," he recalls thinking.

"We believe in India. We believe in Carrefour. We believe in business models of saying things are changing, but we need to be part of a large, big box value retailer who knows what they're doing."

The comfort, he says, came from watching Carrefour operate up close as a customer in the Gulf himself.

"The execution of what they do is unbelievable," he says.

"So we said, why don't we take this expertise that Carrefour has into India and share our understanding of India, and take it forward." Then, almost as an aside, delivered in the easy Hindi-English mix that punctuates much of our chat: "You speak Hindi pretty well: Roti Kapra Makaan. So we did Kapra and Makaan, and Roti was left."

A different beast entirely

For all the borrowing from the Gulf playbook, Ved is clear-eyed that India cannot simply inherit it.

"India is a large market. It's different languages, different states, different rules," he says. "It's a 4.1, 4.2 trillion economy, 1.4 billion people. You have to work around it."

He contrasts this with the relative simplicity of operating across the Gulf. "Compared to that, the Gulf or the Middle East is easier. One language Arabic, one religion, Muslim, two Eids. We know the Eid dates," he says. "Schools open on the same day, one week up and down. Here, even the holidays are called something else in one state. People drink tea in a different format: it's very strong in the north, differently packed."

His conclusion is unambiguous: "You have to adjust to India, and to do that, it takes time. It takes years... I don't think, in a retail format point of view, that anyone can say I will come and change India."

Why Carrefour picked Apparel Group

I put it to him directly: has he ever stopped to ask why Carrefour chose Apparel Group as its ally for this second innings in India? His answer circles back, again, to alignment of vision. "It's important to understand that this alignment, and the visions between Carrefour and Apparel Group are aligned in a format of saying, what do we really want to achieve," he says. "We want to achieve the standards that we have done in the Gulf region, in French markets, in different markets, be it in Brazil or be it in Morocco, or do we just want to open stores for the sake of opening or putting a flag saying we opened."

Global exposure, he adds, was another shared currency. "I've been to Carrefour for training. I've been to the Gulf countries, and seeing what is done: can we do that here." But the guardrail is always local adaptation: "You cannot take a playbook from Dubai and adjust it here, or take a playbook from Casablanca and plug it in here. You have to adjust to India. And in India, you'll have to adjust to the state: Delhi is very different than in Kochi."

Chasing the Lulu effect

Kochi, as it happens, sparks a comparison I can't resist raising: the near-mythic status Lulu Hypermarket holds there, nicknamed the "Taj Mahal" by locals, complete with tourist buses ferrying shoppers to its doors. Could Carrefour hope to command that kind of cultural gravity, the place you simply go for cheese, avocados and mangoes?

"I think we would like it to be a one-stop destination. We'll work hard to become a one-stop destination," Ved says, before pointing to a built-in advantage: the brand recognition Carrefour already carries among Gulf-based NRIs and Indian tourists who shop the aisles in Dubai or Paris.

"It's not that we are bringing a brand which is unknown. It's a known brand with Indians," he says. "Now, to make sure that the quality of the store and the quality of people and the quality of service is the same throughout every store in India, that is our job."

That, he insists, means resisting the temptation to simply transplant a foreign catalogue. "We have the French culture from Carrefour, we have the Indian management in it, and we adjust to the market," he says. "Instead of coming up and saying I'm going to only sell what Carrefour Paris sells or what Carrefour in Riyadh sells, no, we will do what we need to, and give the customer what they need."

People, speed, and a finance man's obsession with cash flow

Talk turns to leadership, and Ved credits two rather different influences: a strict school upbringing and the operational discipline he associates with Dubai's civic machinery. "It is not easy at all," he admits of managing people.

"By the same time, I went to a school where the teachers were tough... I appreciated everything they did for me." He calls it tough love, paired with a second, non-negotiable principle: speed. "There's nothing like, oh, I'm going to do it after a week, I'm going to do it after a month," he says, pointing out, pointedly, that he was "father of the bride about 45 days ago" and is opening Carrefour today regardless. "It's all about speed, and the people that help you to do it and deliver it."

He also credits Dubai's own model of execution as an inspiration, name-checking Sheikh Mohammed and Emirates' Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum. "Emirates works: it takes off on time, lands on time. We depend so much on it," he says. "Dubai Inc, or the Dubai government, works. Everything works. So learning those business models and getting the right people is a game changer."

On the wider Gulf outlook, Ved shares a striking data point from a recent conversation with a Dubai-based CEO. "He told me something which shocked me. He said there are 12 new shopping malls opening up in the Gulf, and we are planning 300 new stores," Ved recounts.

"It's amazing that our people have the energy and the growth in all the Gulf countries that we live in, with all the things that's happening around us." He sees India's retail story following a similar arc, a shift from unorganised to organised retail that mirrors what happened in the Gulf.

"We've seen this in the Gulf, where people moved from souq to the malls. Here we still have a lot of unorganised retail, and this will move to organised retail, and that's where we are coming in."

On the anxieties every brick-and-mortar retailer now carries about quick commerce eating into footfall, Ved is measured rather than dismissive. "I'm sure everybody is thinking, okay, how can I make sure the infrastructure that's built around me, can I use this for e-commerce or quick commerce," he says. "At the same time, if you look at markets like the US, Walmart, or markets like Spain, Aldi or Mercadona, they're all growing with brick and mortar despite what's happening. There is always going to be fear. By the same time, you've got to make your space, you've got to make a mark, and keep moving."

The balance-sheet philosophy

For the money question I ask every CEO I sit down with (how did you make it, and does it excite you), Ved's answer is unsentimental and entirely in character. "Retail is an amazing business if you do it right. If you get it wrong, you can lose your shirt," he says. "In retail, a lot of times the key is the real estate. If you get the real estate right and the right deal, you'll do well with an average brand also, I'm saying in the Gulf specifically."

His deeper point, though, is about discipline rather than glamour. "People live on dreams that the profit will come after five years or seven years. If you don't have the cash flow, you'll not survive for tomorrow," he says. "A lot of times, most people don't know if they're profitable or not." It is a philosophy he traces back to his finance background, and, curiously, to cricket. "I keep telling my guys: I need to know the score of cricket ball by ball. I need the score of my business ball by ball. I need to know if you're profitable or not. That's it. Focus on your business, focus on profit, focus on your cash flow, you will be okay."

It is, as I tell him, a strikingly simple philosophy for a man who has just closed out a year that included marrying off his daughter, running a business empire, and launching Carrefour's flagship India store almost in the same breath. His reply is characteristically brief: "I run my business by balance sheet. Show me your balance sheet, and I can tell you where you're going. It's that simple."

As our conversation winds down, there's a personal note too, a reminder that after years of covering the Ved family's journey for Gulf News, the relationship has become something closer than professional.

From covering his dynamic wife and retail powerhouse Sima Ved to now trailing him through a Delhi store launch, it is, fittingly, a full-circle moment.

And if there's one parting request from this side, it's simple: bring Carrefour, and its famous cheese and date counters, to Kochi.

"We have big plans! This is just the beginning," said Ved.