Home International Aditya Birla to launch retail chain 'More'

Aditya Birla to launch retail chain 'More'

Aditya Birla Group announced that it would set up a 1,000-store network alone at an investment of 80-90 billion rupees over over the next few years. Aditya Birla Retail an unlisted firm of the group expect to roll out 15 stores in Pune next month.The retail chain will be named "more". Hypermarket is the other format the group plans to enter. And for this retail foray, the group plans an investment of Rs 7,000-8,000 crore. However, the unlisted entity, Aditya Birla Retail will tap debt and equity in due course of time. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, AV Birla Group, said, “We have made a commitment to our shareholders that each company will stick to its own core business; therefore, the idea of doing it altogether with resources pulled from the different public listed companies is not something that is in keeping with the commitment.” ‘More’ is being positioned as a neighbourhood supermarket, but unlike Pantaloon and Reliance, it is keeping away from being a price warrior. One can expect the usual set of private labels, not only in staples, but also categories like home and personal care. The group is busy tying up with vendors and is hoping to leverage the group's presence for that. Sumant Sinha, chief executive of Aditya Birla Retail, said it would hire 5,000-10,000 people in the first year of operation.   Sumant said, “We are obviously looking at renting and leasing to the extent we can, and where we can’t, we are looking at buying real estate. We will consider it and if it requires financing, we will look at innovative ways of doing it.” In January 2007, the company entered retail by acquiring 170 stores of retail chain `Trinethra Super Retail.` The company is planning to acquire smaller retailers to rapidly gain share in the organised retail market already having competitors like Kishore Biyani`s Future Group, Reliance Retail and the proposed Bharti Wal-Mart chain. The stores would be a mix of large hypermarkets.

 

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