ADITYA BIRLA to expand in south India

September 21, 2009 |

Planet Retail 16 Sep 2009

Aditya Birla Retail (ABRL) is planning to expand its presence in the south of India. ABRL CEO Thomas Varghese said: "With about 400 of the 642 supermarkets in the South (of India), we expect to turn positive in the next few months in the zone.

At a company level, it will have to wait for a couple of years to see a break even and this is because the stores in other zones are much younger." While the industry reports that the group is putting finishing touches to its fifth hypermarket, to be opened in Bangalore by the end of September.

He continued to say: "The plan now is to have eight hypermarkets and 700 supermarkets by the end of the fiscal year (December 2009) and the stores are in several stages of evolution. The two-year gap (since the first hypermarket opened) was because the rentals were too high then and now it is what it should be, a rent to revenue ratio of 3-4%."

Following earlier announcements, last year More supermarkets recorded a 15% same store sales growth. "Of course the initial plan of investing INR8,000-10,000 crore (USD1.6-2 billion) in the retail market has been toned down over the months, but the vision is to have 929,368 square metres of retail space by 2015 through multiple formats." ABRL has close to 176,579 square metres of retail space in two formats. "We do want to explore various formats, but not at this stage," he added.

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