Nakumatt celebrate golden milestone with opening of 50th branch in Arusha, Tanzania tomorrow.

Atul Shah

Regional retailer, Nakumatt Holdings, will this weekend kick-off a series of consumer reward programmes to celebrate the opening of its 50th Branch in Arusha, Tanzania, this Saturday.

The opening of Nakumatt Arusha, formerly operated by South African Retailer- Shoprite- is a major milestone for the retailer, as it had earlier set a corporate target to open its 50thbranch by February 2015 under its Nakumatt 2.0 Corporate Development Strategy.

Having started its supermarket operations in 1992 with its pioneer Nakumatt Mega store located along Nairobi’s Uhuru Highway opposite Nyayo Stadium, Nakumatt has been enjoying steady growth for the last 20 years.

Under the stewardship of its Managing Director Mr. Atul Shah, Nakumatt has over the last two decades managed to revolutionalise East Africa’s formal retail operations having pioneered several retail concepts. Among other retail concepts, Nakumatt was the first retailer to unveil The 24 hrs shopping across the region.

With a staffing force of more than 7000 across the region, Nakumatt is perhaps now the leading formal sector employer in Retail sphere in East Africa.

Across the region, Nakumatt has been at the forefront in the promotion of regional retail trade integration and currently operates 8 branches in Uganda, 4 in Tanzania and 2 in Rwanda alongside its 36 Kenya stores.

“This weekend, we shall be opening our 50thbranch in Tanzania which will also symbolically confirm our commitment to expand our services beyond East Africa in the next five years,” Shah affirmed.

And added: “As we celebrate this golden milestone, we are also kicking off a variety of consumer reward programmes to express our corporate appreciation to our smart shoppers across the region.” Currently enjoying a more than US$650million turnover for its regional operations, Shah confirmed that Nakumatt’s future looks bright with its  expansion plans now trained on such markets as, South Sudan and Burundi among others.

With the opening of Nakumatt Mlimani, Pugu road and Nakumatt Arusha Shah, pointed it out that Nakumatt now has four running stores in Tanzania. The three new stores are the latest additions to the existing Nakumatt Moshi store which opened its doors in 2011 in the bustling town at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro.

In Kenya, Nakumatt is also gearing up for the opening of two new stores in Kenya by the end of the year. Alongside the store openings, Nakumatt is also actively enhancing its private brands (Nakumatt Select and Nakumatt Blue Label) roll-out across the East Africa region, to offer the best value proposition to its loyal shoppers.