Ten Star Bazaar stores to be opened by 2016

Trent Hypermarket, Tata Group’s retail joint partnership with UK’s Tesco Plc which operates Star Bazaar, plans to open 10 new stores by the end of March 2016. It will be followed by 50 to 60 more stores by the end of the fiscal year. The first Star Bazaar store opened in 2004 and till now only 20 have been added. The company doesn’t want to continue with its large format stores, instead it would focus on smaller ones.

Jamshed Daboo, CEO, Trent Hypermarkets, admitted that the last couple of years had been slow because they wanted to be absolutely clear about what space they wanted to carve out. Now, the company will adopt a multi-brand approach to expansion. Stores will open only in three cities in Karnataka and Maharashtra: Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore. This is so because these states favour foreign firms such as Tesco to own as much as 49 per cent stake in retail chains. As per the new strategy, stores will be opened only in standalone outlets and not malls.

Daboo believes that opening stores in the aforementioned cities will help in concentration and saturation within the cities. If required, a fourth city could be added. Also, placing stores in high streets will reduce operating costs.

Trent Hypermarkets’s revenue was Rs 790.14 crores at the end of the fiscal year 2014 while the loss calculated was pegged at Rs 55.07 crores. Daboo is, however, confident that in four years the company would scale three times more than what it is today.