More up its sleeve

Last fortnight, Kumar Mangalam Birla played his latest card in the Aditya Birla Group’s Rs 10,000-odd crore retail gambit. After hypermarkets and supermarkets and dabbling with concept stores of its various brands, the $28-billion (Rs 120,400 crore) conglomerate has launched a family store format in Mumbai.

Madura Garments, the apparel retail business of the group, plans to invest Rs 400 crore to open 80 Peter England People stores, each spread across 10,000-12,000 sq. ft, over the next five years. By June, Bangalore will have a Peter England People store, which will also make its way into Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. By the end of the current financial year, Birla will have 10 such stores across different cities.The market for organised apparel retail is estimated at Rs 4,900 crore and is expected to grow to Rs 1,30,000 crore in the next five years.

The Aditya Birla Group expects to rake in Rs 4,500 crore ($1.04 billion) revenues from the apparel retail business in the next five years.

The Birla way He’s going step by step. Current formats Hypermarkets; supermarkets; flagship and concept stores of its various brands (Allen Solley, Louis Philippe, Van Heusen); Peter England People, a large-format family story Total number of outlets 250 exclusive flagship and concept stores; 10 Peter England People Stores by fiscal year-end; Aditya Birla Retail that has 500 supermarkets and two hypermarkets plans to have 1,500 supermarkets and 100 hypermarkets by 2011 Investment to be made over 3-5 years Rs 400 crore for Peter England People and Rs 8,000-10,000 crore for Aditya Birla Retail

Says Birla: “Our vision is to make Peter England People India’s favourite family brand and the dominant fashion apparel retailer. We plan to have brands straddling mass, premium and super-premium/luxury segments.”

The family store is the new plan on Birla’s drawing board. However, clearly it is the hypermarkets and supermarkets portfolio, under subsidiary Aditya Birla Retail Ltd, that is hogging most of his attention, and investments.

The group’s foray into retail began in 2006 when it acquired Trinethra, the south Indiabased chain of stores. Trinethra has over 170 outlets in the south.

By May 2007, the company had launched its ‘More’ brand of stores—while the supermarkets have a minimum size of 10,000 sq. ft, the hypermarkets are spread over 75,000 sq. ft.

Until March 2008, the company had rolled out 500 supermarkets (including 275-odd Trinethra stores that have been now renamed ‘More,’) and two hypermarkets in Mysore and Vadodara.

Eventually, the group hopes to scale up to 1,500 supermarkets and 100 hypermarkets.

That will call for hyper growth.