Why are retailers opening speciality stores these days?
With property prices going up, it is not viable to open huge malls in the center of the city but it is important to be close to one’s customers. As such, the trend is to open smaller formats and specialized stores. Are you diversifying into other categories like F&B, food court, malls etc? We have 40 restaurants operational in our retail stores. Our restaurant ‘3H’, which stands for Health, Hygiene and Hunger, will be open within our stores as well as in standalone format. If any person has a very good space, we may give the restaurants on franchising. Currently, we have no plans to enter malls or food court business. We have opened a Retail Management Institute called ‘Institute of Management Excellence’, a school to train persons interested in retail jobs varying from front-end staff to floor managers. You have set up a private equity fund. How will it work? Our private equity fund will buy minority stakes in consumer product companies whose products are sold in our stores. The idea
