Aditya Birla Group's retail arm seeks to expand 'More'

The retail arm of Aditya Birla Group, Aditya Birla Retail Ltd (ABRL) has announced plans of investing Rs.250-300 crore to expand its retail business and set up at least a dozen hypermarts across the country under the brand name More Megastore in the coming financial year.

"We will probably open a dozen hypermarkets in the country in 2008-09. The hypermarket offers a seamless shopping experience offering 60,000 products from over 500 suppliers," said Russell Berman, head of ABRL's hypermarket division, on the sidelines of inaugurating the first of such hypermarket in Vadodara in Gujarat.
"Our mission at Aditya Birla Retail's More stores - be they super marts or hypermarts, is to change the way people shop and to make the entire shopping experience, a fun-filled enjoyable process for the whole family from the husband, to wife, to kids and to parents," said Aditya Birla Group chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla.
"While our conveniently located neighborhood super marts all over the country provide all the daily and weekly shopping needs, our destination hypermarkets will cater to monthly and event-based shopping requirements. The More Megastore is a one-stop shop for the entire family. Here we offer an extensive range of 60,000 products catering to every need of a household," Birla said.
"As you walk through the Megastore, you will find an excellent toys and stationery mart for children, every household product for the woman of the house, furniture, electronics, mobiles, apparel and what-have-you for the husbands and wives to shop together, a live bakery and a cozy caf for parents to relax," he added.
"We have now 430 super marts across the country and this is our second More Megastore which is a hypermarket. We will end the year with 500 super marts so it has gone very much as per our expectations," Birla said.
"We have enough funds for our retail plans through internal accruals and won't be raising money from the capital market. As for the investment, it depends on the scale of rollout in the country. However, it will be substantiative enough for a national presence," he added.
Overall, the group plans to invest Rs.10000 crore in retail business and open nearly 1,500 supermarket and 100 hypermart stores in the next five years.
In a separate development, ABRL, maintaining a low profile, has launched five More outlets in Kolkata, West Bengal, taking the total number of smaller version of the hypermarket to nine.
By end March, there will be at least 30 More stores in the state, each of around 2000-2500 sq ft, a senior executive of ABRL said.