Shoppers Stop to invest Rs 75 cr for retail expansion

Raheja-owned Shoppers Stop, one of India's oldest and largest department store chains, has chalked out

plans to utilize around Rs 75 crores to open new stores across India. The plan is to launch at least 10 new Shoppers Stop departmental stores to increase profit margins and achieve growth.

However, the upcoming stores would follow a new strategy of being smallers in size with a focus on fashion merchandise, which is considered to be a high-margin category offline as well as online. Over the next three quarters, the company also expects the sales to improve owing to positive consumer sentiment. Last week, it opened its 5th store in Pune and 72nd in the country. The new store is spread across 60,000 square foot on two levels at Seasons Mall at Magarpatta City, Pune.

This year, the company opened doors to five new Shoppers Stop stores in Mangalore, Vizag, Ahmadabad, Kolkata and Ludhiana and plans to launch more stores during the third and fourth quarters of this fiscal with an investment of Rs 6-8 crore in each store. Plans are also in the pipeline to add small size six more hyper-market format HyperCity stores over the next three years with an investment of about Rs 8 crore each.