The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Retail chain ‘More’ launched in Bangalore

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Friday, Jan 25, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Retail chain ‘More’ launched in Bangalore

Special Correspondent

The Aditya Birla Retail chain plans 60 stores in city
Target by March 2008: 500 stores in the country

Bangalore: Bangalore has yet another retail chain store. The Aditya Birla Retail Limited launched its retail branded stores in Bangalore today. The chain of stores, named ‘More’ includes the recently acquired retail brands, Trinethra, Fabmall and Fabcity. After the integration of these stores the ‘More’ chain in the State will have 60 stores in Bangalore, eight in Mysore and 10 in Mangalore.

Sumant Sinha, CEO, said that the company plans to expand operations in Karnataka by establishing 100 stores in the by the end of the current financial year.

The company now has a network of 350 stores across the country, of which 275 are in the southern states Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. By March 2008, the company plans to establish 500 stores across the country.

Mr. Sumant Sinha said that although most of the ‘More’ stores are supermarkets where consumers can get their everyday needs, the company also plans open stores in other formats such as hypermarkets. He said that a hypermarket would have a floor area of at least 60,000 sq. ft., whereas the average size of a supermarket is about 4,000 sq. ft.

The company plans to invest Rs. 8,000 to Rs. 10,000 crore in the next few years. He said that this investment would result in 1,000 to 1,500 new supermarkets and 50 to 100 hypermarkets across the country.

He said the organised retail industry was “still in a nascent stage” and that the market shares of the new entrants “were not very reliable”.

Mr. Sumant Sinha also said that high real estate prices “was still a cause for worry”.

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