Leaving India

Carrefour, one the world's largest retail chains, is shutting its business in India less than four years after it opened its first store in the country.

Carrefour S.A. is a French multi-national retailer, headquartered in  Boulogne Billancourt, France, in Greater Paris. It is one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world (with 1,452 hypermarkets at the end of 2011), the fourth largest retail group in the world in terms of revenue.

Carrefour operates mainly in Europe, Argentina, Brazil, China, Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but also has shops in North Africa and other parts of Asia, with most stores being of smaller size than hypermarket or even supermarket. Carrefour means "crossroads" and "public square" in French. Previously the company head office was in Levallois-Perret, also in Greater Paris.

It currently operates five cash and carry wholesale stores in India.

The French retailer has been exiting under performing markets, including Singapore, Malaysia and Greece, under chief executive Georges Plassat's three-year revival plan.

It has said it wants to focus on key markets in Europe, China and Brazil.

India opened up its multi-brand retail sector to foreign firms in 2012.

But it has put preconditions, including those on local sourcing and infrastructure investment, and has also left the final decision on whether to allow foreign companies to open stores to individual state governments.

Many analysts have said the pre-conditions have deterred foreign companies from entering the sector.

The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) - which has recently formed a new government in India - had opposed the move arguing that the arrival of big name supermarkets may hurt the small retailers in the country.