Aditya Birla Retail to invest Rs 1,500 cr on expansion

Aditya Birla Retail has decided to invest about Rs 1,500 crores

in the next five years to expand its hypermarket and supermarket stores. The company that runs hypermarkets under the ‘More Megastore’ brand is looking to open 12 stores each year, while adding around 150 outlets every year to its ‘More’ chain of supermarkets. The average store size of the ‘More Megastore’ hypermarket will be around 60,000-70,000 sq. ft. Currently, the company has 12 hypermarkets and 590 supermarkets. To deal with issues like high rentals, the company has decided to either build its own sites or is tying up with developers. It has not witnessed low demand due to rising inflation, for basic necessity items like food and grocery.

Aditya Birla Retail is the retail arm of Aditya Birla Group a $28 billion company. It ventured into food and grocery retail sector in 2007 with the acquisition of a south-based supermarket chain. Subsequently Aditya Birla Retail expanded its presence across the country under the brand ‘More’ with two formats supermarket and hypermarket.