Desi supermarkets

Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was visibly irked when an international moderator at a discussion she was participating in suggested there were "no major supermarkets in India".

While steering a discussion on the state of retail trade in the country, the moderator repeatedly said he didn't remember seeing a single major supermarket during his trips across the country, perhaps hinting that India should raise the foreign investment ceiling in multi-brand retail.

An irritated Sitharaman invited him to take a trip with her to Bengaluru and Hyderabad to see "the scores of mega stores" dotting the landscape. "Our supermarkets are friendlier than the faceless supermarkets I have been in the West," she snapped.