IndiaRetailBiz

Spencer’s Retail, among the country’s oldest organized retailers, currently operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of CESC, a part of the $ 3.5 billion RPG Group, will soon undertake a massive exercise to recruit manpower for its rapidly expanding retail network. This was revealed by Ramesh Menon, Senior Vice-President (Operations), of the company. He was talking on the occasion of inauguration of the Company’s 35^th large format store at Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.

The stores count of the predominantly food and grocery retailer, which grew from150 to 400 in 2007-08, is likely to grow further from around 400 at present to 1,000 this financial year (2008-09). RPG has announced to invest over Rs.1, 500 crore on the expansion. Spencer’s is expecting its turnover to increase from 1,000 crore in 2007-08 Rs. 1,800 crore in this financial year (2008-09).

Spencer’s currently operating stores under four formats occupy over two million sq ft of trading area and serve the requirements of over 100,000 customers across 65 cities every day.

Spencer’s, which currently employs about 10,000 persons, according to a Business Line report, is looking at recruiting about 1,000 persons every month until the end of this calendar year. Around 200 of these will be MBAs.

To help support its recruitment drive, Spencer’s among others will be seeking service of NGOs, Defence Services, and Colleges.

Spencer’s has been fortunate enough to manage its attrition rate at 15% only, while the industry norm for the same is believed to be 30%. This to some extent could be attributed to the company’s heavy investment on manpower training. It provides in-house training to its employees through its training initiative called “Pragati.” Operating out of Chennai, the training facility has several branches across the country.

Spencer’s Retail operates under four formats — Spencer’s Hypermarket (20,000 to 60,000 sq. ft), Spencer’s Super (3,000 to 10,000 sq. ft), Spencer’s Express (around 1,000 sq ft) and Spencer’s Daily.

The majority of new stores will come in Spencer’s Super format (also known as flagship stores).