Koutons Retail targets Rs 1,800 cr topline by '12

Garments manufacturer Koutons Retail India Ltd is aiming to be a Rs 1,800 crore company by 2011-12.

The company is planning to open 1,000 retail stand alone stores for its Koutons brand by 2007-08 apart from relaunching its Charlie brand of denim wear this financial year.

The Gurgaon-based company will relaunch the Charlie brand, targeting the age group of 16-24 years, by opening 100 stores in a single day and expects to close this financial year with 200 exclusive Charlie franchise stores.

"We want to be the biggest garments retail player in the country and we are looking for a turnover of Rs 1,800 crore by 2010. To reach this figure, we have laid out plans to relaunch the Charlie brand this September by opening 100 stores in a single day and taking up this figure to 2,000 stores by 2009-10," Koutons Retail India Ltd chairman D P S Kohli said.

"Apart from this, we also have aggressive growth plans for the Koutons brand we are looking at opening 1,000 stores across the nation by 2007-08."

Koutons plans to ramp this up to 450 stores by the end of this financial year, focusing mainly on spreading its wings in the western and southern parts of the country.

The garment manufacturer had just 74 stores in March last year and has seen this number quadruple to 296 stores presently.

"We are comfortable in north India and we already have a presence in Tier-II cities here but the virtually untapped markets of south and west is where our big growth will occur now after which we are looking at stepping out of Indian shores to the West Asia," Kohli said.

Koutons will launch at least 150 stores in the south and the company will invest Rs 55 crore in the next two years to ramp up its back-end operations to cope with the fast paced expansion. It will fund this expansion through private equity, internal accruals and borrowing from the debt market.

Private equity firm UTI Ventures recently invested Rs 27 crore in Koutons and the company had plans to go for a Rs 140 crore IPO but this went into limbo after the volatility in the capital markets, which will be revived once the stability returns, Kohli said.