IndiaRetailBiz

“Home Town,” the “first of its kind home improvement format” in India, owned by Home Solutions (India) Ltd, a wholly owned home retail subsidiary of Pantaloon Retail India, is all set to open its largest store in Kolkata.

The new 200,000 sq ft ”Home Town”  store of the group is located in Bengal Shrachi’s “Block by Block” mall. The new mall located near Rajarhat Road in New Town area of the “City of Joy.”

“We have always shared a special emotional connect with Calcutta and this HomeTown store is an affirmation of our faith in this city,” said Kishore Biyani, Future Group CEO, while speaking about the group’s new initiative in Kolkata.

“This will do wonders for Rajarhat’s sagging public image, which has seen negative perception amplify in recent months over infrastructure issues. A huge destination retail address like HomeTown has the power to draw footfalls from far and wide,” said Rahul Todi, the managing director of Bengal Shrachi, owner of the mall that has appropriately been billed as the country’s “First Complete Home Solutions Mall.”

The Kolkata Home Town store is around double the average size of other outlets of the retail chain. This Rajarhat store is targeting to garner ”substantially higher” revenues compared to its sibling stores in other parts of country.

Home retail segment, which apart from Home Town also includes durables chain e-Zone, among others, has achieved sales turn over of over 1,100 crore in the first 11 months (July 2008- June 2009) of this fiscal. While, this represents an overall increase of 37.36 per cent in sales for this segment, over the similar period of the previous year, there was a decline of 7.85 per cent in ’same store sales’ during the period.

Undeterred by dip in sale of home improvement products due to recession in real estate market, as reflected by reduction in ’same store sales,’ the group is going ahead with its plans to aggressively expand the business of this segment. The Future group is looking at a eevenues of Rs 1,800 crore from its HomeTown stores retail chain.