Bharti Walmart opens retail training centre in UP

Bharti Walmart launched its first cash-and-carry store in India in Amritsar in 2009

Cash-and-carry major Bharti Walmart has opened its first retail training centre in Uttar Pradesh, in Lucknow.

The training centre, Best Price Modern Wholesale Store, would provide free training to underprivileged youth and equip them with skills required in the cash-and-carry and organised retail formats.

Bharti Walmart is a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Walmart for wholesale and back-end supply chain management operations in India.

The centre aims to create a pool of modern retailing professionals by training 40 students per month. It would offer short-term vocational certification courses to churn out floor and sales assistants and supervisors.

The training centre would enable less privileged youth to find employment and enhance their skills, Bharti Walmart Chief Operating Officer Arvind Mediratta said. The centre would provide free training and offer campus placement assistance.

The curriculum is based on Walmart’s global best practices and would be implemented through training solution firm Centum Learning. Successful candidates would be certified by Bharti Walmart.

Till date, over 15,000 students of Bharti Walmart training centres have been certified and over 5,400 placed in different companies.

Such centres are operating on the public-private partnership model in Amritsar, Delhi, Bangalore, Aurangabad and Hyderabad. Three training centres are also running at stores in Zirakpur, Jalandhar and Ludhiana in Punjab and four training centres have been set up in partnership with the Hope Foundation in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Bharti Walmart is a business-to-business joint venture that caters to small retailers, manufacturers and farmers. It launched its first cash-and-carry store at Amritsar in May 2009. Currently, there are 18 stores at Amritsar, Zirakpur, Jalandhar, Kota, Bhopal, Ludhiana, Raipur, Indore, Vijayawada, Meerut, Agra, Lucknow, Jammu, Guntur, Aurangabad, Bhatinda, Amravati and Hyderabad.