The market has a habit of rediscovering India’s middle class as if it were a fresh idea each time. In the last decade, that crown belonged to D-Mart — the grocery chain that turned frugality into a business superpower and made value buying sound glamorous.

Now, as India’s consumption story shifts from metros to smaller towns, investors are asking a familiar question again: Is the next D-Mart already in front of us, quietly expanding under the name Vishal Mega Mart ?

Walk into any Tier-2 city high street and the evidence is hard to miss. A Vishal signboard, a modest façade and shoppers carrying plastic baskets.

It isn’t jazzy.

It doesn’t need to be.

Vishal’s stores have become the department store of middle India, a place where families shop not for brands but for bargains.

But th

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