“We are currently working on how best we can come back to the state in a major way. It’s all currently on the drawing board,” said Jhunjhunwala.

Reliance Retail, which is present through Reliance Fresh and Reliance Digital retail chains, may be required to even buy real estate in the state as it has already run out of space.

“We have exhausted the space for our Reliance Fresh format and so if we plan to expand this format, we have to buy real estate,” said Jhunjhunwala.

Reliance is also hopeful of settling its dispute with local authorities soon to develop its stalled project of reviving municipal market at Park Circus in Kolkata. “The company was now at an advanced stage of negotiation with the authorities to settle the dispute,” said Jhunjhunwala.

While, the Delhi-based home goods, value, retailer, which currently operates around 170 large format (mega) stores across the country, has closed some 12 non- performing stores and removed around 6,000 employees in the past few months to come out of its financial woes, it’s going to be a long and arduous journey for the company to restore confidence of its stakeholders including lenders, employees, vendors, and investors, among others.

According to a Live Mint report, the cash strapped retailer, which carries a debt burden of around Rs 730 crore, has now begun to even offer the company’s equity shares in lieu of outstanding payments to its vendors.

While, asserting that “nothing of this sort is happening” the company Chairman has, however, conceded to the newspaper “… If any supplier is interested in having stake in the company while having faith in its future, then we would welcome them to be our stakeholders as this will bring in more sense of belongingness, which will only benefit us in the long run.”

Agreeing that “cash flow is under stress” Agrawal has also confirmed that “the worst is not over yet.” According to him, “The company is gradually moving towards normalcy and lot more is being done before we say that the worst is over.”

Despite several measures undertaken by the company to stem the rot, including freeze on further expansion, situation continues to remain grim. “In the present situation, very few suppliers will give credit to the company,” said an erstwhile apparel vendor of the company.

Vishal Retail, it may be recalled, was once a darling of equity investors. They had lapped up the company’s Rs 10 equity shares at a premium of Rs 270 each in the IPO during the boom days for retail sector in July 2007. The IPO was oversubscribed 81 times. The equity share, which once touched the dizzy heights of Rs 1001, is currently selling at around Rs 60 each.

The business, which was badly affected due to decline in demand as a consequence of global economic downturn, resulted in closure of over 100 stores in the last 12 or so months across the country. Apart from draining resources, these under performing stores were incurring huge expenses on salaries and rentals, resulting in non-viable operations.

The days of closing down of store are now behind the company and it has again begun to expand its retail network, though cautiously.

“The period of shut downs is now over. We have opened five large format stores during past three months and all have reported sales more than double the normal sales rate. So we are optimistic about revival,”  said SanjivGoenk, Vice Chairman of the Company, while speaking to reporters in New Delhi.

Although, the sales are showing signs of revival, they are still not enough to take the company “out of woods,” said Goenka. While, the company has recorded growth of 18 per cent in the same-store-sales, in the last 3 months, however, there is still a need for them to grow further. The costs should also come down substantially to make the operations profitable.

“Rentals are still very high despite dropping by an average 20 per cent or so,” said Goenka (ET report). The company has so far been able to prune rental costs by 12 per cent, according to Goenka.

Spencer’s is looking at breaking even its operations at store level within the next 6 month, while the break even at the company level, according to the report, is expected within a period of the next 12 months.

Under the circumstances, the company is cautious on expanding its network. While, the retailer has opened 5 new stores in the last 3 months, it is planning to set up another 10 during the financial year, at an investment of Rs 100 crore.

In order to raise further resources, Spencer’s is looking at diluting 10 per cent of its equity in favour of private investors. It is believed to have already begun talking with a few investors in this regard. The company will look at raising equity through IPO only after it achieve break-even. Spencer’s is also exploring induction of a multi-national retail player partner to sore up its back-end operations. The tie-up could be lines of Bharti-Walmart joint venture.

Founded 19 years ago on the 27th October, 1991 with the unveiling of its first men’swear store in Andheri, Shoppers’ Stop, is owned by leading hospitality and real estate player K Raheja group. Shoppers Stop is among the country’s pioneering and leading organised retailing company that currently operates several multi-format lifestyle retail chains, across the country.

Nagesh’s movement from an ‘executive’ position to a ‘non-executive’ position is part of succession planning of retail business within the group. Nagesh, who has been working for 19 years with the group, is looking forward to spending part of his time on personal and social interests.

According to the new organisational restructure, while Nagesh will continue to remain on the company’s Board of Directors (now, as non-executive director), he will also play the role of a strategic advisor to the management. Nagesh will also be guiding the management team as its mentor. Nagesh will also continue to hold the currently held positions of chairman and vice chairman respectively in Crossword Bookstores Ltd. and Hypercity Retail (India) Ltd- both part of the group’s retail business.

In the new organisation structure, Govind Shrikhande, who is currently working as chief executive of the company, will also rise to become President and CEO, of the company. This position is currently held by Nagesh.

Apart from being an exercise in succession planning, the process of restructuring the organisation, according to Nagesh, will nurture talents to run the company as well as ensure that there are CEOs and MDs in the making for the group.

Shoppers Stop– professionally managed company– has Chandru L Raheja, as its chairman and his sons Ravi C Raheja and Neel C Raheja as its Directors on its board.

Apart from experiencing falling footfalls and declining basket size (average invoice value) due to global slowdown, the highly leveraged retail chain was facing the problems of high interest cost and paying heavy payroll expenses.

On both the counts, the company, according to a BS report, appears to have succeeded. Vishal has been able to bring down the number of employees by a whopping 45 per cent from nearly 16,000 a year ago to 8,500 now. The company has also been able to address the problem of high interest cost by bringing it down from Rs 10 crore a month earlier to Rs 7.25 crore a month now. The interest cost has mostly come down due to negotiaon of interest rates with the lenders. Against a high rate of 15 per cent per annum the rate has now come down to 9.75 per cent. What is most worrying, however, is the fact that the company continues to carry a high debt burden of Rs 730 crore at an extremely debt/ equity ratio of 1.7.

“We have told the bankers that ours is a profit-making business model. All we need is some leniency in the rate of interest, so that we could make a comeback,” said Ambeek Khemka, group president.

Unless the company resorts to further dilution of some of its investments in assets, or inducts fresh equity capital in the system, it will be extremely difficult for the retailer to improve upon its leveraged position.

One of the major reasons for highly leveraged position of Vishal Retail could be attributed to the policy of going in for ‘unbridled expansion’ of its retail network. At one point of time, the number of its stores had crossed 184 while the space occupied by these stores had almost touched three million sq ft.

Most of the Vishal’s expansion like many other fast growing retailers (like Subhiksha) was funded via short term funds in the hope that fresh infusion of capital will help replace these high cost, low maturity funds.

The sudden plummeting of equity markets, however, led to a situation in which there was a sudden evaporation of capital from the markets. Even the plan for dilution of promoters’ equity stake could not fructify as most of the potential buyers themselves were struggling for raising funds and at the same time pruning their own operations.

“Excess short-term debt, coupled with plans of equity fund raising falling apart owing to poor market sentiments, led to sub-optimum capital mix and increased interest burden,” said Khemka.

Vishal Retail, which has now begun to clock over Rs 100 crore in monthly sales, is looking at closing down 20-odd stores to further rationalise its business. It is also looking at optimising employee expenses by cutting down on travel and communication allowances, particularly that of the top management, including the president.

“We are looking at increasing our per-employee productivity and this is one step in that direction,” Khemka added.

The new HyperCITY outlet spread over 100,000 sq ft of trading space located in InOrbit Mall boasts of wide aisles and 20 checkout counters. The store was launched on Friday, the 31st July, 2009.

“We are delighted to launch HyperCITY in Hyderabad. It is our first store in in the city and we are confident that HyperCITY will prove popular with shoppers. We have seen immense potential in this city and therefore believe it to be the perfect market to establish our store. HyperCITY will provide shoppers a truly international shopping experience, where customers can shop in comfort in a large, modern and exciting environment,” said B S Nagesh, vice-chairman, Hypercity Retail (I) Pvt Ltd, on the occasion.

“We expect revenues of Rs 1,000 crore by the next year once four more stores are commissioned by June 2010,” added Nagesh. Offering details of present operations of the retail chain Nagesh said, “the Malad (Mumbai) store alone had registered revenues of Rs 175 crore, the Vashi store Rs 90 crore and Jaipur store close to Rs 75 crore. With Hyderabad, we are confident of doing about Rs 100-crore business.”

Speaking about expansion plans, Nagesh said, “While the economic downturn has affected retailers in the country, we have not swayed away from the ongoing expansion plans. Four properties are at the advanced stage of being inaugurated. The first off the block will be one at Amritsar, followed by another one at Mumbai with Bangalore and Pune next in line,” he said. The company is expected to achieve break-even after the opening of its seventh store at Bangalore.

The HyperCity Hyderabad like its counterparts in Mumbai and Jaipur offers a wide array of over 44,000 products under fresh, food and grocery, home entertainment, technical appliances, furniture, sports, toys, fashion accessories and footwear categories. These products are being sourced from vendors located in India and abroad. HyperCITY is also looking at setting up laundry, pharmacy, bakery, ATM, and other services at the mall.

InOrbit Mall is a real-estate venture of Mumbai-based construction major K Raheja group, which owns HyperCity Retail India. The retailing company is also partly owned by leading department store format retailer Shoppers Stop.

Speaking on the occasion, B S Nagesh, said that the group is looking at opening 10 such hypermarket format stores across India by 2011. Each new store will entail an investment outlay of Rs 30 crore each.

“Unbridled expansion coupled with the economic recession created a mess resulting in this huge loss,” said Ambeek Khemka, Group President, Vishal Retail.

As such, apart from taking other measures to bring operations back on track, the retailer has decided to consolidate its operations by closing down up to 10 non-performing stores out of 170 stores being currently operated by the company. These stores are expected to be closed down in the coming months.

“We are looking to consolidate our business and close down unviable stores,” said Ambeek Khemka. “Now we are identifying unviable stores and within months we will close down up to 10 of them,” he added.

Vishal, which reported a net negative (loss) EPS (earning per share) of Rs 51.22 for Q4 (2008-09), compared to nett EPS of Rs 4.61 for Q4 (2007-08), was once during the year operating over 180 hypermarket (megastore) format stores and occupying nearly 3 million sq ft of space, across the country. 20 of the presently operated stores in the retail chain are franchisee managed.

Apart from closing down non-performing stores, the company has also taken measures to save money on payroll expenses. It has already reduced manpower strength from 14,500 employees during the peak boom time to around 8,800 employees at present.

Vishal Retail, according to Khemka, is also busy restructuring its ballooning debt of Rs 740 crore.

“We are talking with our lenders to reschedule our debts, which are worth around Rs 740 crore,” added Khemka.

The debt for the Vishal Retail during the year has increased by nearly 40 per cent, which has resulted in the company becoming one of the most leveraged companies in retail business.

The company, which was operating through a network of Distribution Centres (cental godowns) across the country, has also closed down all of them except the one being operated from Gurgaon near Delhi in Haryana.

“We have already centralised our warehousing operations,” said Khemka.

Vishal Retail also took several initiatives like reducing real estate expenses by renegotiating lease rents with property owners, renting out space for shop-in-shop counters to local/regional brands, and creating display space for national brands, for improving its cash flows during the year.

The retailer, according to financial results, has incurred a consolidated net loss of Rs 94.49 crore for the 2008-09 financial year ending 31st March, 2009. The loss is significant in the backdrop of net profit of Rs 40.64 crore during the financial 2007-08. Against income of Rs Rs 952.97 crore in 2007-08, the income in 2008-09 at Rs 1323.23 crore was higher by 38.85 per cent.

The last quarter (Q4) performance (2008-09) was quite bad for the company as it incurred a net loss of Rs 114.72 crore between January- March 2008, compared to standalone net profit of Rs 10.40 crore in the same quarter last year (2007-08).

Standalone total income during Q4 2009 was lower at Rs 232.89 crore compared total income of Rs 318.41 crore during Q4 2008.

Post economic slowdown, Vishal has been facing pressure of falling footfalls (same store), declining average purchase per customer, and mounting interest cost, particularly during later part of the financial year under review.

The retailer was busy restructuring debt of around Rs 730 crore during June, 2009. The retailer was interestingly carrying a debt of Rs 532 crore in 2008.

Vishal Retail, which was a darling of equity investors only a year or so ago, in the last one year saw its share price plummeting from a high of Rs 455 to Rs 25.20. The price, though has now recovered to Rs 59.40 on stock exchanges yesterday.

Likewise, the company will be adding 21 Reliance Digital stores to its present strength of 14 stores. Thus, by 31st March 2010, Reliance Retail proposes to have a pan-India retail network of 55 speciality stores comprising 35 Reliance Digital and 20 iStore stores.

The expansion, according to Ajay Baijal, Reliance Retail’s President and Chief Executive (Consumer Durable, IT & Telecom), will entail a new investment of Rs 110 crore as each new Digital store costs around Rs 4 to5 crore while each iStore costs around Rs 40 lakh. This was revealed by Baijal while speaking to PTI on the subject.

Reliance Digital stores, which competes with the likes of Croma (Tatas), Next (Videocon), e-Zone (Future group), Excite, among others, at the national level and with Vivek’s, Vijay Sales, etc at the regional level, occupy a large space of between 10,000-40,000 sq ft each. “iStore,” outlets, which are basically exclusive (single) brand outlets that derive their strength from umbrella brand-name of Apple, on the other hand, on the other hand, are small sized stores occupying 1,000 to 1,500 sq ft space each.

The company, according to Baijal, is already scouting for properties to implement its ambitious expansion plans.

Consumer durables and electronics, which offers a Rs 50,000 crore (over $10 billion) opportunity, is currently dominated by tradional, small traders.

While the passenger vehicle prices have come down by Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000, LCD prices are witnessing reduction of Rs 1,500 to Rs. 3,500.

While, prices of Mitsubishi’s Outlander, Pajero and Montero, Ford’s Endeavour, and General Motors’ Tavera have come down by Rs 6,000 each, the prices of Toyota’s Camry and Innova have come down by Rs 5,000 each, though M&M is yet to announce the extent of reduction in prices of its vehicles.

Samsung Electronics, according to its spokesperson, will reduce prices of its flat display panels between Rs 1,200 and 3,500. “The Samsung 32-inch LFD monitors will get cheaper by Rs 1,200, the 40-inch LFD monitor by Rs 2,000 and the 46-inch LFD will cost about Rs 3,500 less,” said a spokesperson.

LG, according to its spokesperson, would rollback the prices of its panels to pre-1st July level. “We had raised the LCD panel pricing by 5 per cent on July 1, due to a steady rise in global LCD panel supply. But with the Budget reducing the customs duty by half, we intend to scale back the earlier price hike.” said the LG spokespersons. LG commands roughly one-fourth share of the LCD market.

It may be recalled that the Finance Minister in his budget speech has announced reduction in custom duties of 10 life saving drugs/ vaccines, heart devices, LCD panels, permanent magnets, bio-diesel, raw corals, cotton/wool waste, among others. He had also announced reduction in excise duty rates of large cars/ utility vehicles, branded jewellery, and packaged software, among others.

The new IT brandshop is a conceptually different distribution model as Samsung India, which so far has focused on targeting consumers through channels and to some extent through government sales, has for the first time gone in for its own exclusive retail store.

The new ‘IT brandshop’ store located at Arihant Arcade, Ameerpet in Hyderabad will to showcase Samsung’s entire range of IT and consumer products, including, notebooks, netbooks, monitors, printers, consumables, digital cameras, digital camcorders, MP3 players and mobile phones. The shop will also offer IT accessories like laptop bags, headphones etc.

“Retail is a big thrust area for us as we are looking at enhancing our consumer interface this year. The IT Brand Shop will represent a one-stop shop for all Samsung IT products, ranging from notebooks to printers. In the coming months, we plan to set up IT Brand Shops in the other metros as well,” said JungSoo Shin, president and CEO, Samsung South West Asia, who inaugurated the store along with Ranjit Yadav, director, IT, Samsung India, in the presence of other Samsung representatives, dealers and customers.

The new Samsung ‘IT Brand Shop’ store has also created an ‘Experience Zone.’ This zone showcases commonly used applications like music, gaming, movie and imaging. Other digital products have been also integrated into this Demo zone to showcase convergence of digital devices.

The equity shareholders of Vishal Retail Ltd, the company which owns the retail chain, in the Extra Ordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the Company held on June 27, 2009, have passed a Special Resolution that authorises the company to issue and allot, in one or more trenches, upto 75,00,000 (Seventy Five Lacs) warrants on a preferential basis to Ram Chandra Agarwal, CMD of the Company. Agarwal also happens to be the founder and promoter of the company.

At the peak of the cash crunch, the retailer was said to be in talks with Reliance Retail, among others, for sale of equity by way of dilution of promoters’ equity in the company.

The company is planning a three-fold expansion of its retail network in the next three years. Croma expects have a network of over 100 stores by 2011.

Croma has also created a compact store format called ‘Croma Zip’ for its expansion model as it is eyeing to penetrate deep into smaller but growing tier II and tier III markets. While, two of the existing stores (at Bombay Domestic Airport and in South Mumbai) are compact format sores, rest of the stores in the chain are regular, large sized, ‘Croma’ stores that occupy space of 15,000 to 20,000 sq ft each.

Currently, Croma stores are operating from large cities like Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Bangalore, Delhi NCR, and Hyderabad. They offer a wide selection of around 6,000 durable products of 180 national and international brands. Croma has also begun to focus on private labels and has already put on offer around 45 products under its own name. It is planning to take the number of private labelled products to 100 during this year and is expecting to garner a share of 20 per cent from the sale of these products.

In the short term, Croma is envisaging to set up of 22 new stores during this fiscal (up to 31st March, 2010). Of the 22 new stores 12 will be compact format Croma Zip stores, while the balance 10 stores will be regular large sized ‘Croma’ stores. One of these compact format ‘Croma Zip’ stores (3rd in the chain) was launched at the Delhi International Airport, yesterday.

The 22 new stores envisaged to be set up this fiscal will entail an investment of Rs over Rs 50 crore as each of compact format ‘Zip’ stores requires an outlay of Rs 1.8 crore, while each of the regular stores requires an ivestment of Rs 3 crore.

While, Infiniti retail, one of the two retailing arm of Tata group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Limited, the second retail arm Trent Limited, which operates Westside, Star Bazaar, and Landmark retai chains, is an independent company of the group headed by Noel Tata.

Croma has tied up with the Australian retail giant Woolworths Ltd, which provides technical support and strategic sourcing facilities to the retailer from its global network.

“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.

Vishal Retail, among the country’s top five listed retailers, which operates 183 megastore across the country, in value segment, has appointed two new independent directors int company’s Board meeting held on the 12th June, 2009.

The new directors, as communicated by Delhi-based company to the Bombay Stock Exchange, are Seema Kukreja and Sandeep Kumar.

While, Kukreja is an Advocate by profession, Kumar is a Qualified Chartered Accountant & Company Secretary.

The retailer, which recently witnessed a fire at its distribution centre in NCR, is struggling hard to come out of the difficult financial situation by putting a freeze on expansion and exploring avenues of generating additional cash flows by offering space to retailers who want to set up shop-in-shop counters and selling advertising space to local/ regional brands within its stores.