Kolkata emerges as a hot retail destination

With an increasing number of brands flocking to the city to grab a pie of Kolkata’s emerging retail market, the metro saw around 10 lakh square feet of retail space being added. The city is also seeing a change in location of retail space with retail development projects shifting from City Centre to places like Rajarhat, Howrah and Belur.

While Merlin Group's Acropolis Mall spread over 275,000 square feet on EM Bypass welcomed new brands like Being Human, Hoppipola, Asia Kitchen, Auntie Annes and Cinnabon to the city with more lined up over the next two years. The largest among the new launches include Shristi Infrastructure Development Corporation's unnamed project in the Westin premises covering almost 4,00,000 square feet, expected to launch by the end of 2017 in New Town. Brands like Zara and H&M are expected to make a foray into the east zone of Kolkata with Shrishti.

There would be others like Tata Housing's Centrus and Bharti Astra's retail space at New Town Action Area II and Forum Group's 3.5 lakh square feet mall Forum Rangoli adjoining their residential project Forum Pravesh in Belur. The total operational retail space of large format malls in the city is around 3.5 million square feet.