... plan $300 million telecom retail push

Eye revenues worth Rs 4,395 crore by 2010.

In a move that reaffirms Essar Group's interest in the telecom sector, the conglomerate is planning to invest around Rs 1,320 crore ($250-300 million) to set up a network of retail showrooms across the country.

The Rs 26,370 crore ($6 billion) group will make the investments over a three year period to set up around 4,000-5,000 mobile showrooms and expects revenues of Rs 4,395 crore ($1 billion) by 2010.

The company is planning to roll out specialty stores titled 'The MobileStore' in the country. These outlets would sell cellular handsets and services, apart from other music and communication products like data cards, ipods and DTH and broadbrand connections.

Apart from the products, the showrooms would also dispense services like bill collection, offer value-added services, exchange and repairing of handsets among others.

Confirming this, Essar Telecom Retail Chief Executive Officer and Director Rajiv Agarwal told Business Standard that telecom and retail were the two fastest growing segments in the country and the company intends to cash in on this.

"We are in discussions with all handset manufacturers and service providers for procuring equipment that are to be sold through the MobileStores. With these outlets, we are targeting audiences in the age group of 18-45 years," he added.

Essar Telecom Retail would officially launch its retail outlets by the second week of next month, even though it has already rolled out about 40 showrooms on a test basis. These showrooms were launched across select cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

The group intends to launch the services under phases, and in the first phase it would set up a network of 150 stores in tier-II cities in the country.

Pune, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandigrah and Ludhiana are some of the cities shortlisted for the rollout. This would be further increased to over 2,500 stores and later to over 5,000 outlets.

The Essar Group is one of the largest corporate houses in the country with interests in core and infrastructure sectors, apart from telecom, BPO and logistics industries.