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.

The retailer is already operating similar stores in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Dhanbad, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jalandhar, Jamnagar, Jamshedpur, Jodhpur and Vizag.

“We are delighted to offer consumers an unparalleled range of jewellery, backed by the assurance of hallmarked gold and certified diamonds, in an unmatched shopping ambience. We are confident that the Reliance Jewels experience will be appreciated by our customers here.” said Bijou Kurien, president and chief executive – Lifestyle, Reliance Retail Ltd., on the occassion.

The store offers a wide range of gold, diamond and wedding jewellery, catering to all jewellery needs of its customers under one roof.

The store loke its counterparts in the country offers jewellery designs numbering over 10,000. These designs incorporate creative art forms from different parts of the country.

While offering high quality products at affordable prices, the retailer also offers customised jewellery making services. To mark the unveiling of its 1st store in Mumbai, the company is offering a promotion scheme of 50 percent discount on making charges for gold jewellery and upto 100 percent discount on making charges for diamond jewellery.

Reliance Jewels also backs its portfolio with guarantee of purity. It offers 100 percent BIS Hallmarked Gold used in every gold jewellery piece and diamonds certified by Independent Certification Laboratories.

Planet Retail Holdings Pvt. Ltd., a joint venture between Kishore Biyani  (49 per cent) and V N Sharma (an Indonesian resident of Indian origin), operates several retail chains in lifestyle segment for products covered under fashion and sports categories. While, the JV operates Planet Sports, Sports Warehouse and The Athlete’s Foot under sports segment, it operates Guess, Next and Women’s Secret, among others, in fashion segment. The company had recently ventured into beauty segment with the launch of The Body Shop stores in India. Prior to Mark & Spencer’s tieup with Reliance, Planet Retail was also operating 14 stores of the UK-based iconic fashion and homeware brand in India.

According to Kishore Biyani, Planet Retail JV had to be terminated because Pantaloon is already in a sports business, which has now become a wholly owned subsidiary of Pantaloon.

Blue Food, on the other hand, operates several restaurant chains under brand names of Bombay Blue, Noodle Bar and Copper Chimney, among others. The JV with Blue Foods, operating under the name of Pan India Food Solutions, had to be terminated because Blue Foods has already merged into a different entity.

According to Sunil Kapur, chief executive officer of Blue Foods, no operational or management changea are envisaged as a consequence of termination of the JV. It may be recalled that Indivision Capital, a private equity (PE) firm, had agreed to invest Rs 100 crore in Blue Foods in October 2008.

The Rahejas-led Shoppers’ Stop is among the country’s pioneering and leading listed retailers. It operates a flagship retail chain under its own name of department format stores across India. Soppers Stop operates Mothercare store in the country under an exclusive franchise agreement signed with the UK-based retailer in August, 2005.

While, standalone Mothercare stores in India ocuppy between 3,000 and 6,000 sq ft of space, the shop-in-shop outlets, which are located inside Shoppers Stop stores occupy an average of 2,000 sq ft in space.

Mothercare has a vision of becoming the country’s number 1 retailer of mother’s to be & baby products in its target segment. It sources 70 per cent of its product requirements in India from global vendors.

Mothercare, the £723 million retailer operating over 1,000 stores across 50 countries of the world, according to reports, is reported to be unhappy with performance of its stores operated by Shoppers Stop in India. The UK-based retailer, according to unconfirmed reports, is believed to have already commenced talks with Trent Limited, a Noel Tata headed retail arm of Tata group, for a possible tieup with the latter. Trent currently operates three retail chains under Westside, Star Bazaar, and Landmark brand names.

In fact, there is not much difference the retail formats operated by the two companies. Westside, the flagship brand of the retail is a lifestyle chain of department store format stores similar to Shoppers Stop’s flagship chain. Both of these draw a large part of their revenues from lifestyle fashion and homeware products and focus on private labels. Star Bazaar is a hypermarket value chain that mainly deals in food, grocery, fresh foods, apparel, and fast moving consumer products. Shoppers’ Stop has a sister retailer in hypermarmarket space called HyperCity. Landmark, on the other hand is a books and leisure products (music, games, toys, stationery) retail chain similar to Shoppers’ Stop’s ‘Crossword’ retail chain.

While, Shoppers’ Stop has several franchise and licensing arrangements with iconic European retail brands, Trent has recently tied up with Tesco, the world’s third largest UK-based food and grocery retailer, to set up a chain of 50 hypermarket stores. Of course, Tesco will provide only back-end and technical services as still no foreign investment is allowed in India in multi-brand retail.

Reliance Jewels, a speciality format of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Retail, which specialises in offering a wide range of certified gold, gold jewellery, and diamond jewellery, launched its 12th store in the National Capital Region (NCR). The new store is located at the Gold Souk Mall in Sushant Lok-1, in Gurgaon. Reliance Jewels offers more than 10,000 stunning designs of jewellery from all regions of rhe country.

“We are delighted to bring the Reliance Jewels experience to the people residing in the NCR. It has always been the endeavour of Reliance to provide consumers with a wide range of high quality products at competitive prices. Reliance Jewels is another step in that direction- we offer consumers an unparalleled range of jewellery, backed by the assurance of hallmarked gold and certified diamonds, in an unmatched shopping ambience. We are confident that the Reliance Jewels experience will be appreciated by our customers here,” said Bijou Kurien, President and Chief Executive – Lifestyle, on the occasion.

To celebrate the occasion and to attract the customers, Reliance Jewels has subject to conditions offered a limited period special introductory discount of Rs. 50/- per gram on gold used in gold jewellery and up to 100% discount on making charges for Diamond Jewellery.

The first Reliance Jewels store was opened on 17th November, 2007. According to the original plan Reliance had targeted to open 300 speciality jewellery stores and garner 10 per cent of the total market overtaking the business of another jewellery retailer Tanishque, owned by Titan Ltd of Tata group.

The € 350 million, Replay is a 28 years old, Italian premium fashion brand that specialises in retailing clothes and accessories for men and women and is present in around 50 countries, across the world. The brand is quite famous in Europe as reflected from almost, 90 per cent of the brand’s sales coming from the European countries.

While foraying into India, Brian Kreel, Replay’s head of business development, had termed India as “a strategic market.” Replay was also excited about finding Future group as its partner. “We have been looking at the market since 2005, and while it is undoubtedly an exciting market, the challenge was to find the right partner,” said Kreel. Even Pantaloon Retail India, part of Future group, was enthusiastic about the entry of premium fashion brand in India. Rakesh Biyani, Director, Pantaloon Retail India, “We will have a new team to create a brand synthesis with other brands.” Biyani who was talking ahead of the fashion brand’s opening of new store in Delhi in June 2008.

However, according to sources in the know of the group’s decision to call off the licensing agreement say that the Replay brand stores will be shut as the brand was not meeting sales expectations of the Indian company. Kishore Biyani, CEO, Future Group, who, however, was non-commital, said, ”May be. Anyway, we didn’t have bigger plans for this brand.”

Westside, the flagship department store format, lifestyle retail chain of Noel N Tata-led Trent Ltd, one of the two retail arms of Tata group, which currently operates 36 stores, recently opened its new store at Nashik in Maharashtra. The new store occupying a retail space of 24,000 sq ft is located in the Untwadi area of the growing commercial city.

“We are very proud to bring the Westside experience to the discerning customers of Nashik. The residents have been exposed to fashion and we hope to enhance this with our superior merchandise, service and an international shopping experience,” said Smeeta Neogi, Head- Marketing, Westside, on the occasion.

Westside, which specialises in deriving most of its business from private labels, is present in 21 cities across India. Of the 37 stores being operated by the company across the country as many as 6 are located in Mumbai alone.

The company, which achieved a sales turnover of Rs 499 crore ding 2007-08, is planning to expand operations of Westside retail chain by opening 10 new stores during the current financial year 2009-10. The new stores are likely to come up in the metro and growing cities of Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kochin, Faridabad, and Guwhati, among others.

High quality, latest in-style products, international shopping experience and value for money pricing have created a loyal following for Westside’s own brand of merchandise. While being trendy they are also individualistic. Almost everything at Westside is exclusively designed for Westside.

‘Westside,’ was founded by Simone Tata in 1998 out of sale proceeds of cosmetics brand ‘Lakme’ to HLL. Trent Limited, the brand’s owner, has now grown into also operating new retail chains under the brand names of ‘Star Bazaar’ and ‘Landmark.’ While, Star Bazaar is a hypermarket format retail chain, Landmark is a books, music, and leisure products chain. Star Bazaar has recently entered into an agreement to set up 50 hypermarket format retail stores in collaboration with the world’s third largest food & grocery retailer Teisco plc of the UK.

Gitanjali Group, one of the country’s largest jewellery makers, is planning to sell around 400 kilograms of gold coins during Akshaya Tritiya– an auspicious day in Hindu calendar. The demand for precious yellow metal always remains very high during this festival. Akshay Tritiya will be celebrated in the country on April 27, this year.

Founded at Surat in 1966, the $1 billion Gitanjali group boasts of 25 jewellery brands including Asmi, D’damas, Nakshatra, Gili, Diya, and Sangini, among others. The group has now joined hands with the state owned MMTC to form a 74:26 joint venture to sell pure gold to customers across the country. The joint venture is setting up a chain of retail stores under the brand name of ‘Shuddhi-Sampurna Viswas.’

‘Shuddhi-Sampurna Viswas,’ has launched its first store in south Delhi. The store was inaugurated by film star Lara Dutta. Lara Dutta is also the brand ambassador of Gitanjali group’s D’damas brand of diamond jewellery. According to Sanjeev Batra, CMD, MMTC, the joint venture will set up around 25 stores this year, while 60 more stores will be set up in the next year.

According to Mehul Choksi, MD, Gitanjali group, MMTC, being the country’s largest gold trader, provides a strategic fit to Gitanjali to make forays into the gold jewellery, after the group has created a strong market for its diamond brands.

Currently, Gitanjali operates 150 exclusive stores. However, in a major expansion drive, it has planned to increase their tally three-fold to 450 stores. The new stores, according to Choksi, are expected to come up in the next 18-odd months at an estmated investment of over Rs 300 crore.

Gitajali is planning to launch 30 new ‘Gitanjali Jewels’ stores across the country, to its already existing retail chain of 38 stores. These stores are expected to come up in short time of just four months. Some of the stores will be set up in tier III towns, as well.

“We are looking at 30 new branded jewellery outlets across the country in the next four months. Some of these outlets would also come up in Tier-III towns of the country as we believe that there is a huge potential for sale of branded jewellery items in these locations,” said Rajesh Baid, Head (Retail Projects), Gitanjali Jewels, while speaking to media persons on the occasion of the opening of its first store at Bhubaneswar in Orissa.

The group is quite buoyent on business potential of branded jewellery in Orissa. It is planning to open another store next month in the steel city of Rourkela.

“We believe that there is a very good demand for branded jewellery products in Orissa as the state recorded sales worth Rs 85-90 crore of our products in 2007-08. The sales are going to pick up significantly now that we have opened our exclusive outlet in the state,” added Baid.

Besides selling branded jewellery at its stores, Gitanjali will also offer branded wrist watches to its customers. The wrist watches, priced up to Rs 60,000, will be imported mainly from Switzerland and Italy.

The group is also actively engaged in selling fashion lifestyle and luxury products through 125 store outlets, 38 of which are branded jewellery stores.

Gitanjali Gems Limited, a DTC sightholder, is one of the largest integrated diamond and jewellery manufacturers and retailers in India. Gitanjali is also building two SEZs, including one in Hyderabad. This SEZ spread over an area of 200 acres is among the largest SEZs of its kind in India.

Concerned with alarming drop in sales of Gold in India- the world’s largest consumer market– the World Gold Council (WGC) has now drawn plans to bring the precious metal within the easy reach of even small consumers. The Council is planning to sale gold even at Call Centres and Saree Shops, among others, in addition to Post Offices. In fact, WGC has already begun an experiment of selling gold at saree shops with Nalini saree shop in Chennai. The response is said to be encouraging.

The idea for expanding the network for retailing gold, according to WGC’s India MD, Ajay Mitra, is to make it available in every nook and corner of this vast country. WGC has identified 4,000 such shops which can spare space for small jewellery stores through a profit-sharing arrangement.

The import of gold in India, which used to import an average of 60 tonnes a month, according to a BS report, has come down to zero in the past two months.

WGC is even identifying new festivals to promote sales of Gold in India. Currently, nine occasions like Dhan Teras (two days prior to Diwali) are considered auspicious for buying the yellow metal. WGC has come out with a list of 86 such national and regional festivals/ occasions that may be considered “gold buying occasions.” This would mean that the Council would be able to promote purchase of Gold almost every fourth day. Would this not be a case of ‘overkill’ is a matter of debate among marketing experts.

According to Mitra, estimated 800 million people in India have a desire to buy gold in small quantities, but are unable to do so due to the perception that it was beyond their means. “Our aim is to reach out to this section of potential buyers and correct that perception,” said Mitra.

Aerens Gold Souk (AGS) Luxury Retail, a Delhi-based venture of Aerens family, which presently operates two Gold Souks at Gurgaon and Ludhiana, is preparing itself to launch a Rs 250 crore multi-specialty mall in the last quarter of 2010. The mall is coming up at Vandalur, near Chennai. The group has also set up Gold & Diamond Parks in Gurgaon and Kochi, while it has established a Wedding Mall in Delhi.

Incidentally, Souk, like Bazaar, is a word used for ‘marketplace in northern Africa or the Middle East.’ It can also signify a stall in such a marketplace.

According to Ashish Gupta, Vice-Chairman and Joint Managing Director, AGS Group, the work at Vandalur Mall to be called “Gold Souk Grande” is currently in progress. It is expected that the floor for anchor stores in this mall spread over 8 lakh sq ft would be handed over to concerned store owners by the end of 2010.

Almost 70 per cent of the 300 showrooms in the destination mall under construction have already been booked, adds Gupta.

The Gold Souk Grande will house a number of wellknown jewellery brands like Adora, Kiah, Celeste, Swaranjali, among others, from all over the world. Apart from jewellery stores, the mall will also house hypermarket, food court, and a miltiplex. The mall will also have brand and vanilla anchor stores offering lifestyle products, accessories, electronics, footwear, cosmetics and others.

The Aerens Gold Souk Group is also building a couple of its projects at Jaipur and Kochi. The Kochi project is also likely to become operational soon.

Founded in 1969, the AGS group, has emerged as a diversified real estate company with a portfolio encompassing retail, commercial, township, hospitality, gems & jewellery parks, and SEZ projects, across the country.

DLF Brands, the retail management arm of India’s biggest real estate developer DLF, which plans to bring at least 15 international brands through joint ventures by 2013, has signed yet another agreement to bring fashion products of the US-based design house Donna Karan Studio (DKS) LLC– part of the luxury goods maker LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA– to India.

“We have signed an agreement with Donna Karan Studio. Our plan is to have 28 stores of DKS’s two brands, DKNY and Donna Karan New York across the country within next five years,” said Kelvin Coyle, Managing Director, DLF Brands, on the occassion. The 28 DKS stores are expected to entail an investment of Rs 65 crore.

The luxury retailer will test the waters with the opening of five DKNY stores in Delhi and NCR before foraying into the rest of the country. These stores are expected to be set up in the next five months. Of these five, three stores — DKNY ready-to-wear store (1) DKNY accessories stores (2)– are likely to become operational in Delhi from the next month.

DLF Brands is currently operating 11 stores of seven foreign brands in Delhi, four of which are through JVs. While, DLF Brands hopes to open 40-50 stores across the country by end of 2009, according to Coyle, it wants to take the tally of the number of stores to 600 by 2012-13.

“The company will need around Rs 2,000-2,500 for each square feet of retail space and the total retail space would be of 2.5 lakh square feet,” Coyle said. The total investment could reach up to Rs 750 crore according to an official.

Apart from the agreement with DKS(US), DLF Brands has also entered into retailing agreement with Italian luxury fashion brands, Armani, Ferragamo, Alcott, Boggi, Piquadro, and French luxury brands Sia Home Fashion and Sunglass Hut.

Reliance Retail, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries, though it may come as somewhat of a surprise, is slowly but steadily growing its retail network.

Despite media reports reporting closure of around 30 under performing stores, the company has more than doubled its stores count from 465 to 950 stores in the last one year. It has thus added 485 store this year. During this period, the company has also expanded its footprint from 58 cities last year to 77 cities across the country, this year.

The retailer’s first hypermarket format store in Mumbai region was launched on 27th February, 2009 at Thane, located on the northern outskirts of Mumbai city.

The 11th hypermarket store at Thane, occupies a space of 50,000  sq ft spread over three floors. The retailer, had launched its first hypermarket format store at Ahmedabad on 15th August, 2007. Apart from Thane, the company is currently operating 10 more hypermarket stores at Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Pune, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Jodhpur, Bangalore, Ranchi, Hyderabad, and Tirupati.

Reliance Mart, the hypermarket format of the multiformat retailer, is part of its ‘value’ segment. Other formats in this segment include Reliance Super, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Delight, and Reliance Wellness.

Apart from value formats, the company also operate a number of special formats, including Reliance Digital, Reliance Footprint, Reliance Trends, Reliance Jewels, Reliance Time-Out, Reliance Living Homeware, and Reliance AutoZone, among others. Reliance Retail has also unveiled speciality formats like Vision Express (eye-wear products) and iStore (Apple products) in partnership (joint venture or franchisee) arrangements with international retailers.

Reliance Retail is expected to also launch a chain of ‘apparel and home-ware’ product stores soon in patnership with the UK’s leading retailer Marks & Spencer.

Tara Ultimo, a jewellery maker and retailer of repute, after spreading its wings in New York, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, UK and Los Angeles, has decided to consolidate its position in India’s retail market by setting up 50 retail outlets across India in the next two years.

The company after having made its debut through its first retail store in Goa is planning to set up stores in Mumbai and Chandigarh followed by Pune, Raipur, Mumbai (second store), Delhi and South Indian towns, said Priti Shah, Manager (Sales), Tara Jewels Exports. in association with states major industrial group Alcon.

“We will have our presence in almost all the states beginning from Goa. The stores are planned in most of the two tier and three tier cities,” added Shah.

Established in 2001, Tara Ultimo is a Mumbai-based company having three manufacturing facilities in SEEPZ/ SEZ. The group, however, had begun its operations under the name of Tara Jewels in 1995. Tara’s products portfolio consists of a wide variety of Rings, Pendants, Earrings, and Bracelets.

Tara is aiming to become one of the top global leaders in the fine jewelry manufacturing industry, with outstanding product and product development, built on an intense passion for innovation, technical advancement and visionary thinking.