India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

Posted: 30 Jun 2008 01:56 AM CDT

Over the weekend, there were lot of happenings centered around the retail sector. With news, announcements and plans coming up of various players. Here is a snapshot of all.

Future Group is restructuring its Big Bazaar operations by splitting it into two entities. One would be B2C format while another back-end operations, which would be operated through a JV with foreign cash and carry retailer.

Big Bazaar is also scaling up its operations by taking its tally to 350 stores by 2011 up from 91 currently. It will also have 3 formats - large stores under Big Bazaar Supercentres, standard onces under Big Bazaar and smaller marts named Big Bazaar Express.

A couple of more internal decisions include integrating operations of Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Home Solutions Retail and KB’s Fair Price Shops to bring more efficiency. It has also dropped plans of opening its rural cash and carry format, KB’s Wholesale Market.

Vishal Retail would be opening 70 more Vishal Megamart stores at a cost of Rs.700 crore by year end to take its tally to 190. It is also planning to launch loyalty cards to attract customers.

UK’s Arcadia Group is believed to have partnered Tata Group’s Trent for bringing its high-fashion apparel and accessory retail chains, Topshop and Topman. Arcadia may also bring other known brands such as Miss Selfridge, Burton, Evans, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis into India later.

Reliance Retail is planning to open a chain of stores to retail mobile phone handsets and compete with established players like Subhiksha Mobile, Hotspot and Essar-Virgin’s The MobileStore.

Spencer’s retail will open 22 Spencer’s Hyper and 425 Spencer’s stores this year. It will also launch fashion and accessories brands to diversify its focus from a pure food retailer to a fashion brand.

Apparel retail chain Globus will open 74 more stores this year to take its tally to 100 stores by 2010.

Italian apparel chain Benetton is setting up 20 new outlets in tier II and tier III cities across the country by the end of next year.

Subhiksha is going to become a listed company as it will merge itself with Blue Green Constructions and Investments Limited and change its name to Subhiksha Ltd. It will also increase its presence by opening 3000 stores in 250 cities up from 1480 stores currently.

Wadhawan Lifestyle Retail is in talks to bring 20 global brands into India and looking at having 4 retail business verticals of international and luxury brands, integrated departmental store chain, specialty electronics chain and value segment.

Lifestyle, a part of Dubai-based Landmark Group, will open 38 exclusive stores more up from its current tally of 18 stores during the next 4 years at an investment of Rs.500 crore.

The only noticeable omissions include announcements from Bharti-Walmart and Aditya Birla Retail.

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