Founded in 19991 by K Raheja group, Shopper’s Stop, currently operates around 27 stores and occupies a total retail space of 1.88 million sq ft. It is looking at setting up 15 to 18 new stores of its flagship chain operating under its own name. The expansion will take the tally of its stores to around 45 stores in the next 3 to 3.5 years by March 2013. Each of the new stores is expected to require an investment of Rs 12 to 15 crore.

Shopper’s Stop is also raising an amount of Rs 100 to 120 crore to exercise its option of purchasing additional 32 per cent stake in HyperCity– a hypermarket format, retail chain owned by the group. HyperCity is currently operating three stores at Malad (Mumbai), Vashi, and Hyderabad. The purchase of additional 32 per cent stake will help Shopper’s Stop become majority shareholder in HyperCity as its stake will then rise from present 19 per cent to 51 per cent. Shopper’s Stop can exercise purchase option up to June, 2010.

Coming out of the specter of falling footfalls and declining ticket size last year, Shopper’s Stop has recorded a rise of 7 per cent in sales to Rs 720 crore during the first six months of this fiscal (April-September, 2009). The rise in sales (Rs 413 crore) was even more significant at 11 per cent during the latest quarter ending September, 2009.

Thanks to several measures of cost cutting and increase in sales, the lifestyle retailer was also able to earn a net profit of Rs 12.06 crore in the last quarter as against the loss of Rs 11.02 crore for the same quarter of the previous year.

“The net profit,” according to Govind Shrikhande, President & CEO, Shoppers Stop, “was due to a combination of cost reduction, maintained margins and increase in sales.”

Among the several cost cutting measures, top management of the company, agreed to take a cut of 15 per cent in its salaries. During the difficult period, Shopper’s Stop refrained from resorting to retrenching of staff, it also refrained from hiring new staff and met requirement of new stores through existing people.

Apart from operating large format, flagship, department format, retail chain, Shopper’s Stop also operates several other home and specialty retail chains. Besides, Crossword– a leading specialty books and leisure chain– Shopper’s Stop is operating retail stores of well known global brands including M.A.C cosmetics (under a retail agreement with Estee Lauder), Mothercare (under distribution tie-up), and Mustang (German lifestyle and jeanswear) in India.

Pantaloon Retail, which operates several multi-format, multi-products retail chains across segments, is expecting to achieve annual revenues of more than Rs 10,000 crore (over $2 billion) this fiscal (ending June, 2010), has announced the target of crossing Rs 25,000 crore in revenues within the next three years (2012), according to the group’s CEO Kishore Biyani, may revisit earlier plan of unlocking the values of its biggest retail chain Big Bazaar.

“There are opportunities which we are looking at, including whether one should knock-off Big Bazaar into a separate company and probably look at listing or a follow up offer on that,” Future Group Chief Executive Officer Kishore Biyani said.

The plan of hiving off Big Bazaar is not frozen yer and is being considered as one of the options to raise resources.

“There are possibilities (on hiving off Big Bazaar) but nothing is on the cards at this moment. It depends on the fund raising exercise,” added Biyani.

The earlier plan of carving out Big Bazaar into a separate entity–although requisite approvals were obtained for the same– was put on the back burner by the company due to negative capital market sentiment following global economic slowdown.

Big Bazaar– though not flagship– is the single most important, retail chain of the group. Big Bazaar, part of the ‘value’ segment that accounts for over 60 per cent of the group’s retail turnover, is the biggest and most successful, hypermarket format chain which operates 118 stores across the 71 cities of the country. Apart from regular hypermarket format, Big Bazaar has also carved out Big Bazaar Express and Big Bazaar Best Deals sub-formats to cater to specific market and customer needs.

“As of now the Rights Issue we had planned is not happening. Whenever we have requirement of money for expansion we will approach the capital market,” said Nagesh while speaking to media-persons in Mumbai on the sidelines of India Retail Forum conference.

The company had earlier proposed to raise between Rs 300 to 350 crore through rights issue to fuel its expansion and raise its equity stake in HyperCity (another K Raheja group company). The expansion will now be funded through internal resources.

According to Nagesh, the company will invest Rs 35 to 40 crore to open four new Shoppers Stop stores during the financial year 2009-10.

The group, according to an earlier announcement, is expecting to add 500,000 sq ft space during this fiscal with by opening four new Shoppers Stop (department store format) flagship stores and 3 new HyperCity (hypermarket format) stores. After addition of new stores, the group by 31st March, 2010 will be operating 31 Shoppers Stop stores and 7 HyperCity stores. The group is currently occupying 1.8 mn sq ft of space.

Shoppers Stop is currently holding an equity stake of 19 per cent in HyperCity. It has an option of raising the stake to 51 per cent by June, 2010.

Talking about sales outlook, Nagesh said that the same store sales (an important metric to judge performace and trends in retail business) are expected to show flat-to-positive growth in the next six months.

After setting up five hypermarket stores in quick succession at Mumbai, Mysore, Aurangabad, Indore and Bangalore (while Mysore store was acquired, the second hypermarket store at Vadodara has been closed), the retailer is looking forward to setting up three more hypermarket stores and over 50 supermarket stores this financial year before 31st March, 2010. This will take tally of the stores under two formats (super and hyper) to over 700 in this fiscal. In the next 5 years, the retailer is aiming to expand its presence five-fold as it is planning to occupy total space of 10 million sq ft by 2015.

Thanks to the acquisition of Hyderabad-based Trinethra retail chain in 2007, bulk of the retail chain’s supermarket stores, numbering around 400, are located in the South. After being renamed, all Trinethra stores, are now also operating under the brand name of ‘More’ or ‘More for you.’

The Rs 1,130 crore retail outfit of the group is expecting its Southern stores to begin making profit in the next few months. The turnaround in this region makes commercial sense as the stores in the South– most of which were operating as Trinethra outlets– are much older in age than their counterparts in other regions.

After pruning non-performing stores, productively utilising space, optimising displays and SKUS, and keeping property rents below 5 per cent of expected revenues, ABRL is expecting to fully turnaround operations of the company within three financial year by March 2013.

“We are half-way down the walk and we have another half-way to cover in the next 2-3 years,” said Verghese.

While, ABRL continues to remain averse to strategic partnerships with foreign partners, it is open to further acquisitions within the retail space. Having pruned down original plan of investing Rs 10,000 crore in the retail business, the company, according to Verghese, will approach capital market with IPO only after it has broken even.

Although, Shoppers Stop, among the country’s largest department format, lifestyle retailer, is not expecting any significant increase in consumer spending until February, 2010, it will be required to hire people as it is planning to open new stores of several of its retail chains in the next few months.

Interestingly, the expected increase in consumer spending from early 2010 will be more cosmetic than real, according to Shoppers Stop’s Vice Chairman B S Nagesh, since the increase will be calculated on lower base of consumer spending last year.

After incurring huge losses, in 2001, Shoppers Stop, again went into red during 2008-09 with the reported loss of Rs 15 crore. This happened as the retailer had to face the double whammy of falling footfalls and declining average spending by customer during the year.

In fact, as part of cost cutting strategy during difficult times, Shoppers Stop chose to reduce staff strength as it did not replace 300-odd Associates (shop floor assistants), who left the company on their own. The existing top honchos of the company also agreed to take a salary cut of 15 per cent during the difficult period.

Although, Shoppers Stop is planning to add 23 stores to the existing 27 stores in the flagship retail chain in the long run, the retailer post October 2009 is expecting to hire about 1,000 new people in the next six months. These people will be hired for 4 to 5 new stores of Shopper Stop chain as well as 3 new stores (Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad) of HyperCity hypermarket format chain.

“We are opening 4-5 Shoppers. They would require about 450-500 people. We have also planned three HyperCity stores and that again would need 500 people,” said Nagesh while talking to media persons in Mumbai on the sidelines of a conference on Tuesday. The company is also looking at adding 5 to 10 stores of Crossword books leisure chain in the coming months.

Shoppers Stop currently employs around 3,000 employees and addition of 1,000 new employees would mean an increase in the workforce of one-third. The retailer is making an outlay of Rs 7 to 8 crore on this expansion, said Nagesh.

HyperCity retail chain, which currently operates 4 store across the country, is partially owned by Shoppers Stop. The retailer has the option of increasing its current ownership of 19 per cent to 51 per cent by June, 2010.

The growth of about 42 per cent, according to the company’s chief executive officer Thomas Varghese, will be achieved through growth in same-store-sales (SSS) and opening of new stores during the current financial year.

After closing around 110 under-performing stores last year, the retailer is currently operating 641 multi-format general merchandise stores under the brand name of “More” across the country. This number also includes rechristened stores of erstwhile Trinethra retail chain. The Hyderabad-based retail chain was acquired by the Birla group company in early 2007.

While, around 25 per cent of growth will be achieved through increase in sss, the balance growth, according to Verghese, will be through unveiling of new stores.

SSS in retail industry is considered as an important parameter to gauge sales trend as this is a reflection of organic growth achieved by the company.

As far as the new business through the opening of additional stores is concerned, the company is seeking to adding around 70 new ’supermarket’ format stores across the country through the current financial year. This will take the tall of stores from 641 at present to around 710 by the end od of 31st March, 2010.

The retailer is also looking at setting up 10 to 12 hypermarket format stores called “More Megastore.” Presently, four stores of this format are being operated by the retailer.

While, supermarket format stores occupy 2,000 to 4,000 sq ft of space, hypermarket format stores occupy over 50,000 sq ft of space.

As reported earlier, the retailer is also focusing on increasing the share of business from ‘private labels’ with a view to improve profit margins as branded consumer products offer little margin.

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.

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.

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.

Pantaloon Retail, the flagship retail company of Kishore Biyani-led Future group, which recently deferred its restructuring plans, is going aggresively on expanding its business in the value segment, which accounts for over three-fifth (60 per cent) of the company’s overall retail business.

Pantaloon, which until May end operated 114 ‘Big Bazaar’ stores and 156 Food Bazaar stores, is setting up six Big Bazaar stores and 8 new Food Bazaar stores (including cut-ins) during the months of June and July, 2009. Of the total retail space of 14 million sq ft, Big Bazaar value chain accounts for about 5 million sq ft.

Pantaloon is planning to open 50 new stores of Big Bazaar– its hypermarket format chain– in the next one year. 20 of these 50 stores will be set up in tier-II cities. At an average cost of Rs 7 crore each, Pantaloon will invest Rs 350 crore on setting up the new stores. The company has recently raised capital of Rs 367.50 crore by issuing ’preferential’ issue of shares and ‘warrants’ to its promoters and is looking at raising further resources of Rs 1,000 crore to fuel its future expansion.

Big Bazaar operates three formats for this retail chain. The size of a store depends on location and business potential of the market in which a particular store is located. While, the largest ’supercentre’ format occupies over 100,000 sq ft space, the regular ‘hypermarket’ format occupies 40,000 to 50,000 sq ft of space. The smallest ‘express’ format occupying 15,000 to 20,000 sq ft is preferred in smaller cities and towns.

Leveraging on Big Bazaar’s brand equity, the group is also looking at promoting speciality businesses like fashion and differentiated food products through standalone stores. While, the company has already launched fashion@bigbazaar stores, it is in the process of setting up similar stand alone outlets for food products and top consumer deals.

ABRL, which currently operates a retail chain of around 650 food and grocery supermarket format and hypermarket format stores under the brand name of ‘More for You,’ according to Thomas Varghese CEO, achieved sales of nearly Rs 1,150 crore during the financial year ending 31st March, 2009 (2008-09) against previous year’s turnover of around Rs 550 crore, is expecting to garner sales volume of about Rs 1,700 crore this fiscal ending 31st March, 2010 (2009-10).

Buoyed by the growth, most of which has come from expansion of the retail network, the company is looking at taking the tally of stores to 720 to 730 stores by adding 60 to 70 stores (80 new stores less 10 t0 20 stores under shut down) during the current financial year ending 31st March, 2010. The company’s focus this year is on opening Hypermarket stores. Against teo hypermarket format stores being currently operated by the company at Mysore and Vadodara, plans are afoot to add 6 to 8 new hypermarket stores of 65,000 to 70,000 sq ft size each, this fiscal. Four of these are expected to be unveiled at Aurangabad, Indore, Mumbai and Bangalore by September, 2009.

Having opened a total of 710 stores in the first 20 months of commencement of business, including the stores of Hyderabad-based retail chain ‘Trinethra’ that was earlier acquired by the group, ABRL in a massive exercise of restructuring operations closed down 76 under-performing stores in the last six months. The company is preparing to also close down a few more stores, numbering between 10 and 20, in the next few months.

“That was part of my cleaning up operation. The last six to eight months have been a wake-up call for the industry. We are going to focus on consolidation this year,” said Verghese while talking about closing of stores to PTI.

A parliamentary standing committee on commerce in its report titled “Foreign and Domestic Investment in Retail Sector” submitted to the government has recommended imposition of a blanket ban on foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail.

“The committee…recommend that a blanket ban should be imposed on domestic corporate heavyweights and foreign retailers from entering into retail trade in grocery, fruits and vegetables,” said the report.

The committee, comprising 40 parliamentarians from various political parties from both the Loksabha and Rajyasabha, was headed by Murli Manohar Joshi- a veteran BJP parliamentarian and former HRD minister in the NDA government.

The parliamentary committee is opposed to the entry of large Indian corporates in the business of modern (organised) retailing, particularly those who sell fruits & vegetables and grocery and those who use malls to sell these products. According to the committee’s findings modern retailing results in job losses and forces small traders to go out of the business. This, though, is at complete variance with the findings of an experts panel (ICRIER) appointed by the commerce ministry to go into the impact of Big retail on conventional retailers (also referred to as ‘Kiranas‘ or ’mom-n-pop’ stores).

Not content only with the banning of large corporates from retail, the commitee also wants the government to also ban the issue of further licences for the ‘Cash & Carry’ wholesale business. Cash & Carry business is currently dominated by the world’s leading multi-brand retailers like Walmart (USA) and Metro AG (Germany). While Walmart is in equal partnership with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises, Metro AG is operating its own. Two other foreign multi-brand retailers Tesco plc of UK and Carrefour SA of France are also in various stages of foraying into this format, which caters to the needs of bulk customers like traders, service providers, and institutions. while, Tesco has already tied up with Star Bazaar chain of Tata group, Carrefour is believed to be close to signing a deal with Kishore Biyani’s Future group.

“Government should stop issuing further licenses for ‘cash and carry’ either to the transnational retailers or to a combination of transnational retailers and the Indian partner, as it is a mere camouflage for doing retail through back door,” says the report.

India’s retail sector, according to Technopak – a well known management consultancy- is currently estimated at $372 billion. Only around 5 per cent of this trade is currently believed to be managed by modern (organised) retail. The balance 95 per cent of the retail business is still controlled by over 1.2 crore conventional small stores.

With excellent growth prospects, the retail business is likely to double in the next five 5 years. Despite this fast pace of growth, modern retail alone will not be able to meet the growwing consumer demand and, therefore, even conventional traders will also continue to grow at 5 to 6 per cent in the coming years.

On back of rising incomes, which leads to increased discretionary spending, the expenditure on food and groceries has been declining consistently. From 40% in 2003, it came down to 36% in 2008, and is expected to come down further to 32 per cent in 2013.

The report, though yet to be confirmed by either Pantaloon or Carrefour, Kisore Biyani, promoter, founder, and Chairman of Future group, has not ruled out such a possibility. According to him, “the company has not concluded any deal with Carrefour SA as yet. I can’t comment on possibilities.” Likewise, Carrefour too has been evasive. According to one of its spokespersons, Carrefour is “in talks with companies but has not signed the deal finally.”

Carrefour, which means ’crossroads’ or ‘intersection’ in French, was founded by Fournier and Defforey families in France in 1959. Carrefour SA, which operates 15,000 multi-format (hyper, super, discount, and convenience) grocery stores across 33 countries of the world, is  predominantly a European retailer with 81 per cent of its revenues of € 86.97 billion in 2008 coming from France (44 per cent) and other European nations (37 per cent). Of the balance revenues of 19 per cent, while 12 per cent came from Latin Amerca, a mere 7 per cent was contributed by Asia (including China). Carrefour SA is also quite strong in hypermarket retail format which accounts for 57 per cent of overall business. Supermarket and Discount store formats, on the other hand, contribute only 17 and 10 per cent of total revenues.

After having obtained shareholders’ approval, Pantaloon Retail, India’s largest multi product, multi format, multi-segment retailer, is currently in the process of creating three subsidiary companies; one each for FMCG, retail and fashion business. The group is also being renamed as had received shareholders’ approval for restructuring the company into three separate entities catering to Future Markets & Consumer Group (FMCG). While, Pantaloon’s fashion division together with the entire investment in its subsidiary Home Solutions (Retail) India is being sold to the wholly owned subsidiary, Future Value Retail, its retail division is being sold to its subsidiary Future Speciality Retail.

Pantaloon, despite ban under current policy guidelines on FDI in retail, is testing waters for inducting foreign capital in multi-brand retail through subsidiary route. The possibilities for this have opened up in terms of Press Notes No. 2, 3, and 4 issued by the government that provide for induction of capital in restricted sectors like media and retail via subsidiary companies subject to parent company having majority Indian ownership. Pantaloon has already taken steps to increase ownership of Indians in the parent company by raising equity capital via issue of rights and warrants to its promoters.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, which was to scheduled to unveil its first store in India on Tuesday, in joint venture with the country’s largest wireless telecom operator Bharti Enterprises, is advancing its time line for expanding its retail network in India.

Originally, the joint venture had announced the plans to set up 15 stores of 50,000 to 100,000 sq ft size and employing more than 5,000 persons over a period of seven years. The company is now confident of achieving the goal in the next three years.

“In 2007, we talked about opening up of 10-15 stores in the next seven years. I think we can open 10-15 (stores) over the next three years,” said Raj Jain, President, Wal-Mart India, in an interview to a TV channel.

“…whatever we plan, we can probably accelerate that based on the learning we had over the last eighteen months,” added Jain.

Apart from softening of realty prices in the past few months, which is vital to the the financial health any retailing company, Jain feels that Walmart is now more confident about doing business in India.

The scheduled opening of the 50:50 joint venture’s maiden ’Cash & Carry’ store at Amritsar, Punjab, had to be deferred on account of outbreak of violence in the city and Punjab state following a firearm attack on a Sikh Guru in a Gurudwara in the Austrian capital city of Vienna last Sunday. The C&C chain promoted under the brand name of ’Best Price Modern Wholesale’ will now be opened after improvement of the law and order situation in the city and surrounding areas.

Walmart, the US-based, $405 billion multi-brand big box retailer, which began its operations in 1962 from Bentonville, Arkansas, United States, currently operates in 15 countries across the world. Worldwide, the retailer emloyes over 2.1 million persons and operates more than 7,800 retail units under 55 different banners. The discount retailer serves around 30 million customers and members every day.

Aditya Birla Retail, a retail initiative of Kumar Mangalam Birla group, which began operations in 2007 after acquiring operations of Hyderabad-based Trinethra superstores retail chain, according to an ET report, is believed to have incurred a net loss of Rs 534 crore on sales turnover of Rs 1,030 crore in 2008-09.

The company sources, however, said that losses are a part of initial investments as the period of gestation in retail business is quite long. While refusing to confirm the financial numbers to the newspaper, these sources have maintained that the company’s retail business is on track.

Apart from operating two hypermarket stores undre the umbrella brand name of “More.. for you” at Mysore and Vadodara, the retail arm of the group operates around 670 supermaket format, neighbourhood food, grocery, and general merchandise, stores across the country. These stores include the erstwhile stores of Trinethra retail chain, which after the acquisition were also rechristened as ‘More’ stores.

More, under the stewardship of its new CEO Thomas Varghese, an old Birla hand, who was roped in after the Sumant Sinha, has taken several initiatives to revamp the operations of the loss making chain. Some of the initiatives include:

• Close some of the non performing stores.

• Take a re-look at the design, positioning and merchandise offered by the retail chain.

• Focus more on large sized stores. The retailer will set up hypermarts of 30,000 to 40,000 sq. ft. spce each.

• Aggressively expanding the retail network; add 200 Supermarket stores and 12 Hypermart stores in 2009-10.

• Renegotiation of property rentals for almost all leased properties with their landlords. The rents in some cases have come down by 30 to 40 per cent.

• Introduction of private labels, mostly in fast moving consumer products category, to increase share of private lablels to 40 per cent in the next 4 to 5 years.

• Look for earning rent from ’shop-in-shop’ opportunities. Recently, ‘Dial for Health’ wellness retail chain owned by Zydus group has inked an agreement to set up such outlets in Gujarat and Maharashtra.

• Look for a financial partner. “We are not looking at a strategic partner. We will be happy to have a financial partner. We have received lots of preliminary interest from investors. We would be open to this idea,” said Kumar Mangalam Birla. Some private equity firms like Warburg Pincus are believed to have shown interest equity stake in the company.

Aditya Birla group, incidentally, also operates 340 apparel stores across the country of brands like Louis Phillippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Esprit in the lifestyle and value fashion segments. These stores are operated by Madura Garments Lifestyle & Retail and Peter England Fashions & Retail, which are part the group’s flagship company Aditya Birla Nuvo. The garments business, which clocked Q4 turnover of 273.3 crore (2008-09) and a nett loss of Rs. 82.2 crore during the quarter, has also embarked on several measures to stem the rot, including closure of 30 stores that will save around Rs 100 crore a year.