Raymond demerges lifestyle business, creates two separate companies

Raymond has demerged its core lifestyle business. This will create two separate companies—the new one housing the core branded textile, branded apparel and garmenting businesses and the existing one to have its new real estate project, land bank, engineering businesses of auto components and FMCG businesses, among others. The demerger is expected to simplify the group structure and enable the demerged company and the resulting companies to have a focused strategy and specialization for sustained growth and the ability to attract investors for better access to capital.

Raymond last year entered the real estate business with plans to develop a residential project. The textile major last month sold 20 acres of land to global investment firm Virtuous Retail South Asia. This is part of the 125 acre land bank it owns in Thane.

Raymond plans to have 1,500 branded stores across India in the next two years. As of now there are 1000 such stores. Most of the new Raymond stores will be opened on the franchise model. Raymond currently operates a network of 1,500 stores across all the brands in 600 cities. Of these 1,500 stores, 1000 are Raymond stores and rest are from other brands which include Park Avenue, Color Plus and Parx.