Future Group ropes in Jabong’s Manjula Tiwari

The Future Group has roped in head of fashion division of Jabong Manjula Tiwari to develop a women’s fast fashion label. Of late, Reliance Retail, Shoppers Stop, Aditya Birla Retail, Tata and RPG have all hired mid to senior level officials from ecommerce companies. The company will create a women’s fashion brand under Tiwari’s guidance, for online and offline retail.

The group announced the merger of its retail business with Bharti Retail on May 4. This partnership will combine the operations of Future Retail and Bharti Retail to create a national footprint of over 570 retail stores in multiple formats across 185 cities over 12.9 million sq. ft.

The company recently announced investment of over Rs 500 crores in 2015-16 to grow it retail network. The company aims to open 20 stores of Big Bazaar, six to seven stores of Central and 10 Brand Factory stores, while increasing the store count of its convenience format chains such as Big Apple, KB’s and Nilgiris from 350 to 750. At the end of this fiscal year, the group increased number of Big Bazaar stores to 184 from 164.